HARNESSING THE POWER OF AI TO ELEVATE RETAIL BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data have transformed the retail landscape into a more organized, efficient, and dynamic ecosystem. Intensifying competition to offer the best value to customers is compelling retailers to leverage AI to gain a deeper understanding of their store operations.

The existing security infrastructure has catalysed this shift to new-age technology solutions that bundle together AI, ML, natural language processing (NLP), and data analytics. Most retail outlets have Surveillance Systems to gather visual data constantly. These systems offer much more than just security and theft protection when coupled with advanced AI-based video analytics. ML, NLP, and computer vision power retailers to predict demand, personalize marketing, analyse brand sentiments, manage inventory, and provide cashier-less check-out services.

Here’s how retailers are capitalizing on AI’s advantages to revolutionize how the retail industry works completely.

MVP Tech’s Transformative AI Solutions for the Retail Sector

Retail Security

AI in retail security encompasses several aspects of retail fortification against shoplifting, theft, and in-store violence. Large stores with thousands of people constantly moving in and out are nearly impossible to monitor manually. Manually scrutinizing each camera feed in real-time and effectively studying the video data generated during a security breach can become extremely cumbersome due to inherent labour inefficiencies and errors.

Without AI, retailers are shorthanded when dealing with such incidents regularly.

Incorporating smart video analytics into the store surveillance infrastructure can accelerate security operations, ensure rule compliance, protect people and property, and minimize risk to the company.

Inventory management

Retail giants can potentially lose billions due to inventory distortion from poor demand forecasting and inefficient warehousing. Inventory surpluses can squeeze margins, increase fulfilment and transportation costs, and raise overall warehousing expenses.

At the other end of the spectrum, a stockout can be equally devastating for retailers as they lose out on potential sales. Simply put, retail stores need to know what to stock, at what level, and at what time; without this knowledge, they risk losing customers to the store next door.

Using computer vision, image segmentation, and object detection algorithms, AI can track items on shelves and send alerts when there’s a stockout. Decision-makers can also use the data gathered by these algorithms to draft heat maps, predict demands, and improve retail and warehouse space usage.

Product placement

Manually auditing product placement and creating planograms for the retail floor is tedious and error-prone. Insufficient knowledge of which products to display on which shelves and in what quantities can prove detrimental to retail companies’ financial health. They need to invest in an AI solution that uses camera feeds to automate the audit process. Image recognition, object detection, and computer vision help fulfill two major KPIs.

First, it keeps track of how compliant the store shelves are to the planogram. Secondly, it tracks the availability of products on the shop floor. Together, this data can help decision-makers efficiently design planograms based on a deeper understanding of product movement and sales.

Customer behaviour analysis

Customer behaviour analysis helps identify suspicious behaviours and take pre-emptive action. It can lead to fewer in-store infractions and shrinkage. But an even bigger advantage that customer behaviour analysis gives, is a deeper insight into the consumer’s mind. Using KPIs like dwell and gaze time, retailers can compare the marketing value of shelves. Additionally, there’s emotional AI that can study human emotions, recognize them, and bring in a new angle to retail sales. They can boost conversion rates, improve planograms, utilize omnichannel marketing, and personalize customer experiences to cross-sell and upsell.

With increased profitability, stores can offer more compelling experiences to their customers and provide them with the right products at the right time.

Cashier-less check-out

Customers today are looking for seamless shopping experiences that are quick, easy, and enabling. To facilitate such experiences, retailers need to focus more on one key area of friction: check-out lines. An AI-enabled cashier-less mechanism can expedite the entire process for customers while eliminating the need to employ human assistants.

But that’s not all. Retail outfits can decode consumer-product interactions using in-store cameras, IoT sensors, and AI systems. They can monitor the movement of products and create an integrated environment for customers to shop in.

Crowd analysis

Crowd analysis goes much deeper than detecting people entering and exiting the store. While overall footfall is a crucial metric, retailers can glean more detailed insights from it. They can use the data to understand customer sentiments, product reactions, consumer preferences, and sales demographics.

With proper crowd management, stores can ensure fire safety compliance, manage queues better, facilitate timely staff changes, and improve overall store operations. Armed with this data, retailers can make a better listing, stocking, and in-store marketing decisions to boost margins and profits.

Optical character recognition

Day-to-day inefficiencies mar retail store operations in the administrative and management departments. These inefficiencies snowball into loss of time, sales opportunities, and potential customers.

One way to optimize the operational setup is to use optical character recognition (OCR). It can turn written text on receipts, invoices, labels, and other documents into digital media for intelligent machines to read, process, and churn into insights.

Retailers can also use OCR to smoothen out the customer invoicing, and product returns processes apart from streamlining merchandising, billing, packing, and supplier invoicing. Many retailers have also started replacing barcodes with OCR to scan products automatically and create a central data repository.

At the forefront of the AI revolution stands MVP Tech. An engineeringdriven mindset and a decade of onground AI experience enable MVP Tech to build scalable retail AI solutions. Our solutions get customized to suit each company’s specific business requirements.

Scan the QR code to learn why end-users require an intelligent and proactive surveillance solution that will go beyond conventional security capabilities. Our solutions provide a comprehensive system to elevate the retail setup’s operational, supply chain, marketing, and customer service profiles.