As consumer demands grow so that helps to drive the deployment and use of new technologies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) implementation is helping retailers automate their operations and to analyse consumer spending trends and, when combined with forecasting models, AI makes it easier to plan inventory levels and reduce the holding of excess stock.
AI is also being used to track and better understand customer behaviours in-store and online and can deliver a more personalised experience for shoppers – helping generate specific and tailored messages, for example.
According to David Barker, President of Honeywell Productivity Solutions and Services, “We’re having talks with retailers around the world about how technology can be deployed to improve the shopping experience and to make the process more efficient.
“There is a lot of interest in personalisation and AI has an important role to play providing a deeper level of engagement with customers,” said Barker. “Looking back, COVID changed the relationship between the customer and retailer and today a much higher value is being placed on the interaction between the two.
“Retailers also want to enhance the frontline worker experience so as to provide a better customer service, so they need technology that can deliver that better experience. That means improved levels of engagement and interactivity. Associates want to be able to pick up a device that’s ready to go, that they’re signed in to and is good to go for a full shift. Does it enhance what they, do or will it cause them undue anxiety?"
Today’s consumers are very well informed so associates need technology on-hand that will help them keep up with and get ahead of what customers already know about a product.
Retailers are also developing omnichannel strategies that look to integrate in-store and online experiences with the aim of giving consumers a more consistent shopping experience.
Augmented Reality is seen as holding greater potential for delivering enhanced product experiences to customers and by simply scanning a barcode or activating a pop-up display, it can be used to demonstrate a product’s features and benefits and can provide shoppers with a compelling incentive to pay a visit to a store.
Lowe, a leading US retailer, is using NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to visualise and interact with a store’s digital data to help its associates better serve customers, as well as to collaborate with one another to improve store operations.
By using an interactive digital twin, Lowe has been testing a variety of augmented reality use cases, including reconfiguring layouts, restocking support, and real-time collaboration
By wearing a Magic Leap 2 AR headset, store associates can interact with the digital twin so they can compare what a store shelf should look like with what it actually looks like, and ensure it’s stocked with the right products in the right configurations.
Using historical order and product location data, Lowe is also using the NVIDIA Omniverse to simulate what might happen when a store is set up differently. Using AI avatars created in Lowe’s Innovation Labs, the retailer can simulate how far customers and associates might need to walk to pick up items that are often bought together.
Guided Work Solutions
Honeywell has incorporated AI and machine learning into its Guided Work Solutions, with the aim of bringing greater operational efficiency and better shopper experiences to retailers.
“A voice guided work solution our Guided Work Solutions enable employees to work at peak performance with the elimination of distractions and unnecessary steps,” explained Paul Crimm CTO Honeywell Productivity Solutions and Services. “A voice automated solution it was developed to guide workers through a task with their responses triggering the next step in the process or workflow.”
The Guided Work Solutions is now using AI-driven speech technology to help associates in-store to perform tasks like click-and-collect order fulfilment, shelf restocking and returns processing faster and more efficiently.
“The retail landscape has undergone a significant transformation, particularly with trends like buy online, pick up in-store and the advent of highly personalised shopping experiences,” added Barker. “Retailers are constantly looking to improve their operational performance and enhance the customer experience and Guided Work Solutions enables this by harnessing the strengths of AI technology to empower retail associates to serve in-store customers in a more efficient manner.”
By combining headset-enabled speech direction with software that offers insights and analytics built on a Honeywell Forge architecture, the solution walks retail associates through workflows in real-time – they simply talk into a hands-free headset and then receive specific directions and confirmation they are selecting the right items.
With the integration of AI, the solution can understand employees’ speech in more than 48 different languages, despite variations in tone, dialect and pronunciation.
The Guided Work Solutions were first launched in 2018 and over the past six years have enabled retailers to improve productivity by more than 30% over radiofrequency (RF) scanning and can reach upwards of 99% accuracy in product picking, according to Honeywell – both of which have helped to improve the use of limited labour resources.
In the future, according to Crimm, “We’ll see the development of multi-model devices. Modalities, other than voice, will be just as important. Images could be used to answer questions and provide a more immediate response - strengthening relationships between users whether that’s the customer or the associate.”
On shelf technology
In today’s retail environment online and physical retail operations need to work seamlessly together, and intelligence needs to be deployed across the entire ecosystem, from the warehouse to a retailer’s online presence and its physical stores.
But with more intelligence comes the need for more technology which in turn needs more power and with the advent of AI and AR so the demand for energy is set to grow even further.
Today, for example, Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) are typically battery-powered, with individual coin-cell batteries providing sufficient energy for use cases such as pricing automation and pick-to-light/stock-to-light systems. They may be effective, but these batteries come with a pre-set amount of energy which could represent a latent constraint for some retailers looking to expand the use of IoT in store.
While retailers can use technology to provide improved On Shelf Availability or Waste Management, the roll out of in-store IoT technology, such as Digital Shelf Systems (DSS), which integrate active sensors, cameras, and Bluetooth radios, require much more energy. At the same time, retailers are faced with sustainability initiatives requiring them to reduce their power consumption rather than increase it.
According to Giovanni Fili, CEO and Co-founder of Exeger, a developer of a solar cell technology, “We’ve been witness to a massive push towards the more connected store. The technology that we have today was a just a dream five years ago, but it all requires power. Retailers operate in a very competitive landscape and need to operate more efficiently and sustainably. But need to do so profitably.
“With our technology – Powerfoyle – there’s no contradiction between intelligence, functionality, efficiency, or sustainability so I think we are at a point when we can help to unlock the full potential of technology – whether that’s AI powered or edge computing.”
Light-harvesting technologies are being deployed to provide sustainable energy sources for retailers, supporting advanced functionalities, while aligning with environmental goals, explained Fili.
“Exeger recently entered an exclusive partnership with Vusion Group to create self-powered smart rails for electronic shelf labels (ESLs), which is an industry first.
“Vusion’s EdgeSense rails integrate Exeger’s Powerfoyle, which is a flexible solar cell technology which provides power to devices using both indoor ambient and natural outdoor light. Using the light already available in stores, Powerfoyle provides the EdgeSense platform with virtually endless energy. The rail is now the solar cell itself and we’ve been able to remove almost 97 percent of the battery capacity.”
Initial assessments of an EdgeSense rail with Powerfoyle, according to Fili, have revealed that in 95% of store areas, the embedded light harvesting system was able to generate a similar amount of energy as six standard batteries during the rail lifetime, while a single EdgeSense rail could support up to 25 displays, reducing a retailer's digital system’s carbon footprint by nearly 50%.
“The EdgeSense rail can support a variety of technologies that can simply be clipped on,” explained Fili. “Whether that’s gas sensor or cameras this power array can offer various levels of support from price changing to more effective management of waste. The efficiency gains are significant for the retailer.”
JWO technology
In the retail space, Amazon looms large and it has talked at length about wanting to revolutionise retail and the way in which customers interact with physical stores.
As more stores have adopted “touchless” checkout technologies, payment methods, the shopping cart and AI are increasingly being used to connect to the cloud to eliminate the need for a physical checkout counter altogether.
A good example is Amazon’s JWO technology – walk in, pick up what you want and then leave – which employs multiple technologies to deliver what is essentially a very simple service.
It uses cameras, 3D shelf mapping, product appearance recognition, and sophisticated tracking software to not only monitor stock levels but to track the behaviour of individuals through the store.
The technology, however, needs to be extremely accurate with a near-zero error rate and it is confronted by a host of potential problems from cameras failing to obtain a good view to climate conditions – e.g. humidity – impacting accuracy. However, extensive testing and the use of machine learning have helped to improve accuracy.
JWO has been implemented in large stores of around 40,000 square feet, where Amazon has also introduced the Dash Cart, which is a smart shopping cart that helps shoppers to find products in the store. The Dash Cart display then helps locate items and guides the shopper to the correct location.
There are a number of important benefits when using this type of technology, according to Amazon, from eliminating shoplifting to reducing labour costs and speeding up operations.
The Future of Retail
More retailers are looking to adopt technology, especially as it gets cheaper and easier to implement and as its accuracy and performance metrics improve.
Possibly the most important innovation that is transforming retail is generative AI. While it is likely to have a massive impact on ecommerce platforms it is also likely to be used to integrate online shopping experiences with the consumer’s in-store experience.
“However, the understanding of AI remains variable among customers,” Barker suggests, “and the retail industry is still figuring out how to use this technology in the best way. While there are certainly thousands of valuable use cases it’s still early days.”
Critically, whatever or wherever technology is deployed by retailers it will need to put the customer first and enhance business practices and, if done well, will deliver more efficiencies, better experiences and improved levels of productivity.
