Leveraging the Power of SmartTE

In the face of labor shortages, economic volatility, and growing pressure to optimize operations, warehouse and logistics leaders are being forced to rethink everything. For APS Germany—a commercial hospitality equipment manufacturer with multiple warehouse sites across Germany and Spain—the pressure wasn’t hypothetical. It was happening in real time.

Like many in the industry, APS was navigating a perfect storm: a shrinking workforce, unreliable systems, and mounting expectations from customers and partners. But instead of increasing headcount or expanding infrastructure, APS made a strategic choice. They transformed their operations from the inside out—with StayLinked.

The Breaking Point: When Legacy Systems Can't Keep Up

Before StayLinked, APS relied on a patchwork of outdated technologies to keep their warehouses running. Their legacy terminal emulation software had become a liability—complicated to manage, slow to update, and prone to error. Each device required manual configuration, which stretched their IT resources thin. Any attempt to push a system-wide change required hours of effort and days of delay.

But the most pressing problem wasn’t configuration. It was connectivity.

APS’s session management was proxy-based, and as workers moved from one part of the facility to another—crossing between buildings or moving outside for transfers—sessions would drop. These weren’t minor hiccups. Each dropped session meant lost scans, repeated transactions, re-entered data, and a real risk of corrupted orders. With hundreds of these incidents happening each month, the time and labor costs were staggering.

Behind the scenes, things weren’t much better. The company’s process for proof-of-condition documentation was largely manual and ineffective. Poor lighting in certain zones made accurate photo capture difficult, and the lack of integration with their ERP system made it nearly impossible to retrieve documentation when customer disputes arose. Disputes dragged on. Claims piled up. And thousands of euros were lost to avoidable misunderstandings.

A Workforce Without a Common Language

As these technical and process challenges mounted, APS faced a new kind of pressure: the labor shortage. In a competitive labor market, APS had broadened its recruiting reach to include skilled workers from Poland, Spain, and across Eastern Europe. While these workers brought valuable experience, many didn’t speak German or English fluently. Training times ballooned. Misunderstandings slowed productivity. And despite having willing workers, APS found itself stuck—unable to unlock their full potential.

This wasn’t just a workforce issue. It was an operational ceiling. The company couldn’t grow without solving the disconnect between people and technology.

The Transformation: StayLinked SmartTE and Evolve

APS’s breakthrough came when they partnered with Scheffer & Hille, a trusted IT provider with deep expertise in warehouse systems. Scheffer & Hille recommended StayLinked—specifically, StayLinked SmartTE and StayLinked Evolve—as a future-ready platform that could resolve APS’s challenges quickly, without requiring expensive infrastructure changes.

The first change APS noticed was connectivity—or rather, the complete disappearance of connectivity problems. StayLinked’s SmartTE platform ensured 100% session persistence. Workers could move freely across buildings, docks, and delivery zones without ever losing their place. No rescans. No data loss. No downtime. With that single improvement, APS recovered over 300 labor hours per month—hours that had previously been spent redoing work caused by disconnected devices.

Then came the improvement to proof-of-condition processes. With StayLinked Evolve, APS implemented a mobile image capture solution that worked even in low-light environments. Each photo was time-stamped, named using the corresponding order number, and automatically integrated with their ERP system. What had once been a labor-intensive and error-prone process was now automatic, accurate, and audit-ready. The impact was immediate: fewer customer disputes, faster resolution times, and over €50,000 in annual savings from avoided claims.

But perhaps the most transformational outcome came from how StayLinked empowered APS’s multilingual workforce.

With SmartTE’s on-screen language localization, workers could instantly receive instructions in their native language—no printed guides, no dedicated trainers, no delays. Some even used the platform’s dual-language display to begin learning German as they worked. Training time dropped by more than 50%. Errors decreased. Employee satisfaction rose. Suddenly, APS wasn’t limited by who they could hire—they had the tools to make anyone on the team productive from day one.

Fast Implementation. Immediate ROI. Zero Disruption.

Despite the depth of the transformation, APS didn’t need months of planning or a massive IT overhaul. The entire migration to StayLinked was completed in a matter of hours. Their operations didn’t skip a beat. Device configuration, once a time-consuming burden, was now handled from a single centralized interface. System updates no longer required hands-on work with dozens of devices. The IT team got back valuable time, and the organization as a whole became more agile, more efficient, and more resilient.

In total, APS estimated they saved more than $158,000 annually between recovered labor, reduced disputes, and streamlined onboarding. And all of this was achieved without hiring a single new employee. The workforce stayed the same—but what they could accomplish changed dramatically.

Resilience in Uncertain Times

In a world where supply chains are still adjusting to the aftershocks of a pandemic, where political and economic uncertainty threatens stability, and where hiring qualified labor becomes harder by the week, APS found a way to rise above. They didn’t expand their workforce—they empowered it. They didn’t add complexity—they removed it.

With StayLinked, APS turned connectivity into continuity, complexity into simplicity, and uncertainty into opportunity.