9 minute read
TECHNOLOGY
from PG-1221
by ensembleiq
SCORING BIG: How to Win the Self-Service Game
Self-service solutions are fast gaining ground in all retail verticals, including the grocery vertical—and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to implement it. PROGRESSIVE GROCER sat down with Carl von Sydow, Director of self-service Americas, Retail, Diebold Nixdorf, to discuss why retailers should adopt self-service checkout solutions and how to enhance existing self-checkout offerings.
PROGRESSIVE GROCER: What’s sparking the accelerated growth of self-service in retail?
CVS: Consumers are constantly changing their consumption behaviors. This isn’t new, but the pandemic has accelerated some changes that were already happening. Consumers expect frictionless, flawless, more self-service-oriented experiences. They expect to be recognized and served on demand. Increasingly, they’re socializing more, seeking experiences, and adopting on-the-go lifestyles.
Retailers must be adaptable and flexible enough to respond to these changes and meet shoppers’ expectations, in a timely manner that best serves their customers and their business. They must also prioritize store associates’ journeys, because efficiency and service are essential to delivering better shopping experiences and improving customer loyalty. This isn’t about adding lots of unattended self-service checkouts and dehumanizing the in-store experience. Staff and consumer journeys are increasingly intertwined, with technology as a catalyst and enabler.
PG: What considerations are imperative for retailers when preparing to move to self-service?
CVS: Self-service implementation shouldn’t be a “one and done” process. Retailers frequently need to integrate new technologies and touchpoints into their existing brick-and-mortar stores. Meeting consumer and business needs requires an approach that supports constant change and adaptability, plus a relentless focus on optimizing consumers’ experiences while lowering overall costs. Retailers must integrate new technologies with existing ones in a flexible way, to preserve the investments they’ve already made.
PG: What technologies can enhance supermarkets’ self-service offerings?
CVS: When preparing stores for now and the future—and only after they’ve evaluated self-checkout usage for some time—retailers can consider adding innovative features like AI-based age checks, fresh produce recognition, and personal self-scanning, combined with self-checkout using either store-owned scanners or shoppers’ own devices. Diebold Nixdorf offers these technologies.
The first step retailers must take here is focusing on the preferred journeys of their target audience and the “frictions” they face while shopping. Then they can select the appropriate next-generation features to incorporate into their current point-ofsale arsenal. The objective: to design and enable appealing consumer journeys supported by an optimal combination of customer checkout technologies that benefit the consumer experience—no more queues, faster checkout, and more convenience—as well as the staff journey, where staff time is freed up to make consumer interactions more efficient and technology TCO is lower.
However, innovative features should be deployed one by one, so they can be introduced, monitored, evaluated, and adjusted step by step. Otherwise, retailers won’t fully leverage their self-checkout investments.
PG: What self-service technologies and services does Diebold Nixdorf offer to retailers?
CVS: We’ve developed Storevolution™, an overarching program and approach to supporting retailers in keeping up with continuous change.
We’ve introduced DN Series EASY, a complete portfolio of highly modular retail self-service solutions built on a single platform. They’re more open than ever before and offer the ultimate in uptime and reliability. All-in-one, yet fully flexible, DN Series EASY features customizable configurations, best-in-class components, and an optimized footprint. Retailers can choose from multiple options for card/cash modules, screen sizes, and peripherals, with on-site scalability, with seamless adaptability.
Openness is essential for a successful self-service strategy. An open, modular software platform ensures that solutions are configured for individual store environments and speeds time to market. Our DN Vynamic™ Self-Service solution, the most open software of its kind, has a modular, flexible architecture that fits a wide variety of current and future self-service scenarios and fulfills market requirements for open retailing via open APIs. Our comprehensive Managed Self-Service solutions ensure availability levels of up to 99.8%, at the lowest TCO.
The DN Series EASY platform approach was born of our Storevolution™ consultative philosophy, which ensures the right combination of hardware and software solutions, operationalized in the right way. Storevolution™ Advisory Services experts work with retailers to optimize their checkout mix in the way it best serves their specific situation and business.
Closing The Digital Foodservice Gap
Six ways grocers can unlock the potential of prepared foods through deeper digital engagement.
By Heather Kirchner
Americans’ appetite for prepared foods is expected to grow in 2022, and grocers are well positioned to better connect with shoppers and serve the increased demand. However, doing so requires overcoming technology challenges to integrate foodservice offerings into digital platforms and provide shoppers an elegant and easy user experience. Ordering prepared foods from a grocer should be, and can be, as simple as doing so from best-in-class foodservice operators that set shoppers’ expectations. FoodStorm executive Heather Kirchener explains how.
Most grocers today have some type of e-commerce presence to give their customers the option of shopping anywhere, anytime. If they didn’t have all of their ducks in a row on this front by 2020, the pandemic certainly pushed them forward, as most people were looking for online order and delivery options to take the place of trips to the physical grocery store.
What grocers are still behind on, however, is how to properly monetize their catering and prepared food business. The U.S. catering market is roughly $60 billion and growing about 2% annually. While catering and prepared foods are among a grocer’s most profitable offerings, many grocers still manage these orders using spreadsheets, paper order forms and sticky notes. If they do have some type of catering software, it tends to be more of a legacy system, and their existing inventory and point-of-sale (POS) systems don’t support the complexities of catering and prepared foods, including lead time, departmental production reports, multiple store locations, shelf life and managing ingredients. Many of the catering software options available don’t offer a way to centralize orders from multiple channels such as in store, over the phone, via email and online.
COMPLEXITIES ABOUND
It hasn’t been easy to find a technology platform to manage the catering and prepared food business. Among the many reasons that grocery catering and prepared meal operations are complex to manage are the following:
Large grocers will operate across multiple store locations, often with varied pricing, taxes and menu items per location
A single order will often be made up of items produced by multiple departments, e.g., deli, bakery, produce and grocery items.
Operations require a multichannel approach to customer ordering: online, in store, kiosk, customer service representative and call center.
Grocers need to be able to support in-store customer pickup and checkout at the register/POS.
The urgency to bring catering online became even more pronounced during COVID-19 as the demand for prepared foods dramatically expanded. As the threat from giants like Amazon and Walmart continues to increase, catering and prepared meals provide further differentiation for independent grocers, which becomes even more important during peak seasons such as holidays.
Grocery businesses really need to think through a multichannel approach in managing their catering operations. Customers are expecting to be able to order online, in the store on a kiosk, or by phone with a customer service person. Grocers need to support pickup of orders from customers and have their catering orders integrated with POS systems.
CHECKLIST FOR SUCCESS
When making decisions about technology solutions to support omnichannel foodservice capabilities, there are six things that should be on every grocer’s checklist. The technology should:
1Support online and in-store ordering Having a central system to manage all order channels — in store, online, by phone or email — allows grocers to have a clear picture of their entire catering business. This helps facilitate production reporting and stock forecasting, therefore allowing them to better execute on the customer experience. It also enables them to meet their customers where they prefer to order; some customers may prefer the online experience, but others still prefer to have the in-person/human-touch experience when they place a catering order for an upcoming event. A centralized system supports both of those experiences.
2Provide powerful order management and production capabilities Having a central place to manage all catering orders (i.e., pointing back to No. 1), allows grocers to have a full view across the entire catering operation. It also allows them to generate production reports across every single department — bakery, deli, etc. — so that each team is clear on what it needs to make for a day of catering. Also, by giving customers the ability to edit their own orders online, grocers eliminate calls into their team to make changes. For customers that do require assistance, the team can easily get into the system and edit orders on their behalf.
3Offer centralized menu management Being able to easily edit menus across all locations in one place is powerful. With strong software, grocers are able to easily adjust the catering offerings per location, provide varied pricing and even get more creative with seasonal menus when everything can be managed in one place. 4 Include POS integration options Grocers should look for features that will let them export catering sales data — item info, pricing, customer info, etc. — back to their POS, allowing them to have central reporting across every store and department. Having all of the data in one place makes reporting easier and will enable them to make more informed business decisions.
5Provide delivery abilities or integrations with third-party logistics (3PL) delivery services Strong catering systems can offer ways to export order data and streamline the customer delivery process, or integrate directly with a third-party delivery software to support the customer delivery process.
6Offer customer relationship management (CRM) features Grocers should find a system that accurately tracks customer spending behavior — when they last had an order picked up/delivered — to proactively market to shoppers and drum up new business. For example, if a customer hasn’t placed an order in the past 90 days, grocers can create a promo code to entice them to come back and reorder. Another important feature is the ability to pull historical seasonal orders and promote upcoming holiday menus/ orders for repeat customers.
Now is the time for grocers to start effectively monetizing this highly lucrative piece of their business, as demand for prepared foods will only increase over the next year. Bringing catering and prepared food products online doesn’t have to be a clunky process; understanding the importance of a centralized ordering and management system, integration with POS and 3PL delivery services, and CRM features is crucial and will save grocers a lot of headaches down the road.
