After decades of stability, where supermarkets relied on a manual workforce for inventory management visitor count, the industry has been going through a massive technological transformation. New technologies offer a more unified insight into planogram compliance, field team tracking, inventory management, visitor analytics, and more, but it’s happening a little too fast for the majority of the competition.
There are various reasons why the industry is embracing new technologies, the main accelerant being the pandemic. Last-mile deliveries, self-checkouts, and concept stores that focus on customer experience have been changing the way consumers interact with stores for a couple of years, but in the background, there’s a more exciting shift happening in the storefront.
The pandemic showed us that retailers too, need to adopt new technologies as quickly as possible, and McKinsey’s 2020 report shows that there’s no other option if what you aim is to grow.
The future of retail is leaving no room for an inefficient workforce, human-related mistakes, and most importantly, tardiness. Thankfully, image recognition technology is here to save the future of retailers. There are many areas in that IR technology is revolutionizing, and retail is a perfect fit for the technology when it meets with advanced AI. Image recognition technology brings minimized workload, decreased costs, and better accuracy. In the end, this all means increased revenue and operational efficiency in the in-store retail operations. In this blog, we will dive deeper into how image recognition is transforming store operations.
Increased Revenue, Decreased Workload: How to Improve Store Operations with IR
Although digital technologies are changing many aspects of our lives, an ordinary store still relies on the human workforce to operate smoothly. But the workload of the staff is never as anticipated since a store operation always demands extra tasks, which in the end affects the field team efficiency and increases workload. Another problem is that the human aspect always leaves room for errors, but the digitalization of the process helps minimize them.
One of the biggest problems for the workforce is handling the store and shelf inventory, which is almost impossible to keep track of in real-time. Once again, image recognition comes to the rescue.
With IR technology, stores can finally reach end-to-end control of the shelves and the inventory automatically, leaving little-to-no work for the staff. In the end, repetitive tasks get erased from the workload, which increases workforce efficiency for tasks that demand “the human factor.”
How to Achieve Next-Generation Store Efficiency: Minimizing Managerial Workload
Next-generation store efficiency is becoming a reality, and one area it shines is the reduction of managerial workload. This is achieved by using image recognition technology to track and monitor products on the shelves.
Image recognition when backed with AI, can be used in a variety of ways to help store managers with their workload. With Vispera’s end-to-end store coverage, managers can have full control over field teams thanks to the unified cloud database, which enables managers to evaluate and reassign team members for more efficient tasks.
Better BOPIS Experience
The pandemic increased online grocery shopping dramatically, more than doubling the online grocery sales only in one year. But since nobody expected such a shift to online shopping, there have been major stock problems, which still remain to be the case for many vendors. There’s no doubt that online grocery shopping is here to stay, but with the decline of the pandemic, the BOPIS (Buy Online Pick-Up In the Store) model is becoming more and more popular. For example, last year, Walmart announced that they drew ¼ of their revenue from click and collect orders.
According to McKinsey, in Europe, supermarket chains opt for the “buy online, pickup in-store” model even more, since it demands fewer resources while transitioning into the online grocery model.
In such an atmosphere, keeping track of the store inventory becomes more essential, and image recognition technology helps retail stores do it automatically. With Vispera, you can keep track of your stores’ shelf inventory with camera systems, and it all happens on the same cloud for more accuracy.
Optimizing Field Team Efficiency at All Levels of Stores
There’s no doubt that IR technology minimizes the workload of field teams. Vispera’s Image Recognition technology lets field teams prove their workload while leaving as little as possible room for mistakes when it comes to inventory tracking and other store operations, including display placement, staff management, inventory optimization, and more... The best part is, that it all happens on a mobile app with cutting-edge visual intelligence solutions that connects to the cloud to create a bigger picture of team performance, store analytics, and team efficiency. See how Vispera’s image recognition technology makes a difference in team performance tracking on our previous blog.
The Technology Unmasked: Image Recognition
Image recognition technology is revolutionizing many areas of daily and business life, and every day, it’s becoming more advanced soon to be leaving no room for mistakes. On the retail front, image recognition is taking place to solve a major problem: inventory management with the power of AI. There are many different image recognition solutions available, but the technology may not meet the demands of your business. There are many things to consider while choosing the right IR technology for your business, and we’re sure Vispera checks all of the boxes.
With Vispera IR solutions (Storesense and Shelfsight), reach all retail channels, boost productivity, and increase staff performance by taking advantage of image recognition and AI technologies.
