The holiday shopping season is the busiest, most high-pressure time of year for retailers, and accurate inventory management becomes absolutely essential. With record-breaking holiday traffic, retailers simply cannot afford slow, inaccurate, or incomplete inventory counts. That is exactly why supplemental holiday staffing from Datascan has become a strategic advantage for retailers who want speed, accuracy, and control over their self-scan inventory counts.
According to the National Retail Federation, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend drew a record 203 million shoppers. More specifically, 202.9 million consumers shopped between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Those numbers prove what retailers already know. Holiday demand is exploding. Inventory is moving faster than ever, and retailers who don’t have enough manpower to complete timely inventory counts risk starting the most important sales season behind.
Below are the top reasons retailers across grocery, convenience, warehouse, apparel, and specialty retail rely on Datascan's supplemental holiday staffing to stay ahead during the busiest time of the year.
1. Record Shopper Volume Pushes Your Team Past the Breaking Point
The surge in shoppers during the holiday season means employees are already stretched thin. Walk into any retail location between Black Friday and New Year's Eve, and you will see staff running from register to stockroom, answering customer questions, restocking shelves that empty within hours, and managing returns that pile up faster than anyone anticipated. With so many customers in the store and shelves constantly shifting, internal teams rarely have time to complete a full physical inventory count.
The reality is that most retail employees are hired to sell, assist customers, and maintain the floor, not to execute complex inventory counts under pressure. During the holidays, asking your team to take on a massive physical count on top of their already overwhelming workload creates stress, burnout, and mistakes. Counts get rushed, items get missed, and data becomes unreliable. When your inventory data is wrong during the busiest sales period of the year, the consequences ripple through your entire operation.
Supplemental holiday staffing gives retailers the manpower they need to keep operations flowing without sacrificing accuracy in inventory management. Your team stays focused on customers and sales while trained professionals handle the count. It is a division of labor that protects both your people and your bottom line.
2. Physical Counts Still Need Human Hands, No Matter How Good Your Technology Is
Even with advanced inventory scanners, RFID inventory technology, and real-time inventory tracking software, physical counts still require human hands to scan thousands of items. A mid-sized grocery store might have 30,000 SKUs, and a warehouse club could have double that. An apparel retailer preparing for post-holiday clearance might need to count tens of thousands of individual items across multiple size and color variations. No matter how good your technology is, someone still has to walk every aisle, scan every product, and verify every count.
Stores often lack enough trained employees to execute fast, complete, and accurate self-scan inventory counts. Even if you pull every available team member off the floor, you might still fall short of the manpower needed to finish the count in a reasonable timeframe. Plus, if you’re running a multi-location operation, the problem multiplies. You can’t clone your best employees and send them to three stores at once, no matter how much you wish you could.
Datascan's supplemental staffing fills those gaps with professionals who are trained, vetted, and ready to support retailers immediately. These are not temporary workers pulled from a generic staffing agency, they are inventory specialists who understand retail operations, know how to use scanning equipment, and can integrate into your workflow without a steep learning curve. You get the extra hands you need without the headaches that come with unqualified help.
3. Extra Staff Cuts Your Count Timeline in Half
Time is money, and no retailer wants to keep the doors closed or slow down selling during the busiest season of the year. Every hour spent counting inventory is an hour you are not making sales. Every day your team spends buried in a count is a day they are not engaging with customers or preparing for the next big promotional event. The longer your count takes, the more revenue you lose and the further behind you fall.
Adding extra people to your holiday inventory count speeds up the entire event. More staff means you can divide the store into zones, assign teams to specific categories, and run parallel counts that cut your timeline in half, or more. What might take your internal team three days to complete could be done in one day with the right supplemental staffing support.
With Datascan's supplemental staffing combined with high-performance inventory scanners and cloud-based tracking systems, retailers can complete counts faster than ever and return to selling without disruption. You get accurate data in a fraction of the time, which means you can make faster decisions about replenishment, markdowns, and merchandising strategies. That faster turnaround translates directly into better inventory positioning during peak sales periods.
When you know exactly what you have on hand, you can adjust orders, shift merchandise between locations, and respond to demand spikes with confidence instead of guesswork. Speed does not just save time. It gives you a competitive edge when every minute counts and every decision impacts your holiday revenue.
4. Background Checks and Quality Standards Come Built In
In high-traffic seasons, retailers cannot risk bringing in untrained or unreliable temporary labor. You need people who show up on time, follow instructions, understand the stakes, and deliver professional results. The last thing you need during a critical holiday inventory count is a no-show, a worker who does not understand basic procedures, or someone who creates more problems than they solve. Datascan's supplemental staff arrive pre-qualified, background-checked, and fully trained on in-store procedures so they integrate seamlessly with your team. Every person we send has been through a rigorous vetting process that includes background checks, reference verification, and skills assessments. We don’t just send bodies, we send professionals who take inventory seriously.
For retailers completing large holiday inventory counts or multi-store rollouts, this level of quality control is invaluable. You are not gambling on who shows up, you’re getting consistent, reliable support that meets your standards from day one. That peace of mind is worth everything when you are managing complex operations during the most critical weeks of the year.
5. Training Happens Before Your Count Begins, Not During It
Unlike typical temporary staffing agencies, Datascan does not send inexperienced workers. Each supplemental staff member receives focused pre-inventory training that prepares them for in-store scanning, count procedures, and operational expectations. They learn how to use the specific scanning technology your store relies on. They understand the difference between cycle counts, full physical counts, and category counts. They know how to handle discrepancies, flag issues, and communicate effectively with your management team.
This training is not generic. It’s tailored to retail inventory environments and designed to ensure that when supplemental staff walk through your doors, they are ready to work. They do not need hand-holding. They do not need constant supervision. They do not slow down your count because they are figuring things out as they go. They arrive prepared, confident, and capable of executing your inventory count to your exact specifications.
This ensures your holiday inventory count is accurate, efficient, and aligned with your internal standards. You get the speed and capacity of supplemental staffing without compromising on quality or creating extra work for your management team. It is the best of both worlds with expanded capacity and maintained standards.
6. You Stay in the Driver's Seat While We Provide the Horsepower
Many retailers worry that bringing in outside help means giving up control of their inventory count. They picture a chaotic scene where unfamiliar workers take over, make decisions without consulting management, and leave behind a mess that internal teams have to clean up. That fear is not unfounded, plenty of temporary staffing arrangements do exactly that.
With Datascan, the opposite is true. You remain fully in charge of your holiday inventory count while our supplemental staffing provides the manpower needed to execute it properly. Your managers set the schedule. Your team defines the procedures. Your standards determine how the count is conducted. Datascan staff are there to support your process, not replace it.
Retailers get the best of both worlds. The speed of additional staffing and the confidence of maintaining control over the entire inventory event. You decide how the count is organized, which areas get priority, and what level of detail is required. Supplemental staff follow your lead, work within your systems, and answer to your management team. The result is a seamless integration that feels like an extension of your team rather than an external takeover.
This control is especially important during the holidays when accuracy and accountability matter most. You cannot afford mistakes or miscommunication, and you definitely cannot afford a staffing arrangement that creates more chaos than clarity.
7. Accurate Counts Protect Revenue When Stakes Are Highest
With more than 202.9 million shoppers during the holiday weekend, missing inventory data can lead to stockouts, inaccurate replenishment, and frustrated customers. Imagine running out of your top-selling items three days before Christmas because your inventory count was incomplete and your replenishment orders were wrong. Or picture marking down merchandise too aggressively because you overestimated your stock levels and panicked. These are not hypothetical problems, they happen to retailers every single holiday season, and they happen because inventory counts are rushed, incomplete, or simply wrong.
Supplemental staffing eliminates the bottlenecks that slow down manual counts, helping retailers maintain accuracy, reduce shrink, and keep their holiday shelves fully stocked. When you have enough people to do the job right, you catch discrepancies before they become major problems. You identify shrink patterns faster. You spot merchandising opportunities that would have been missed if your count was hurried or half-done. The result is better customer satisfaction, stronger revenue, and a faster return to selling. Accurate inventory data means you can confidently restock hot items, adjust pricing strategies, and make smart decisions about promotions and markdowns. You’re not guessing or hoping, you’re operating with reliable information that drives better outcomes. And when the holidays are over, you enter the new year with clean inventory data instead of a mess that takes months to sort out.
What Sets Datascan Apart for Holiday Inventory Support
Datascan is the leader in self-scan inventory solutions and supplemental staffing for retail inventory counts. Retailers select Datascan because we provide supplemental holiday staffing trained specifically for inventory events, high-quality inventory scanners ready to use out of the box, inventory tracking software for real-time visibility, enhanced data analytics for post-count insights, and experienced support for full physical counts, cycle counts, and category counts.
Datascan supplemental staffing is not designed to take over your process. Instead, we strengthen your inventory team so your count is faster, smoother, and more accurate.
Secure Your Staffing Before the Holiday Crunch Hits
The busiest retail season in history demands better inventory control. With unprecedented shopper volume and increased sales velocity, supplemental holiday staffing is no longer optional. It is essential.
Retailers who want accurate counts, faster execution, and full transparency choose Datascan.. Contact Datascan today to get started and ensure your inventory is ready for a busy holiday season.
