How AI-powered Video Intelligence solutions are transforming retail businesses
Published on 29 Apr 2022
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of most promising technologies that is empowering businesses across the globe in better decision-making, by replacing intuition with intelligence. It involves building smart machines or programs capable of performing tasks and analyzing data with human-like intelligence. With AI-based applications now proliferating nearly all industries and business domains, it has proven its ability in enhancing customer experience, reducing operation costs, and unlocking greater efficiencies across the value chain.
For retail businesses, AI solutions are helping them to understand store trends with higher accuracy which gives a more realistic view of the performance of their retail space. This enables them to deliver a more personalized shopping experience, improve customer loyalty and increase conversions, all with the help of data-backed governing powered by AI.
According to marketing research firm Tractica, the global AI market is expected to surpass $36.8 billion in 2025, with the retail segment alone slated to make investments in AI to the tune of $8 billion by 2024. It is therefore important that retail businesses understand the benefits of integrating AI solutions into their operations and gain a strategic advantage over their competition.
Accurate in-store footfall trends to enhance conversions
By using existing surveillance systems or specialized AI-based edge devices, AI solutions based on computer vision technologies can count the actual customer walk-ins after segregating staff and other sundry movement. With iOT integration, passing shopper traffic can be analyzed and retailers can study customer behavior inside stores to optimize store layout, devise engagement strategies and improve in-store conversions.
A unique combination of Computer vision and iOT helps in understanding customer count, demographics, and dwell trends to understand the path to purchase and define conversion benchmarks backed by data. Additionally, iOT and face recognition technologies give a real-time view of the repeat trends, which can be fed into CRM initiatives to enhance sales and build better customer experience.
Advanced AI algorithms utilize facial recognition to analyze the walk-in shoppers and decode what could be their interests, based on previous visit history and by matching it with their social media impressions. Additionally, by understanding passerby data, retailers could even deploy app notifications to motivate them to visit their stores and browse through the products on display. By evaluating the amount of time spent in the store, further marketing or in-store engagement activities could be then implemented to improve conversions further.
Supply chain optimization based on customer insights
With AI, retail businesses can predict the demand for each product by analyzing historical sales, season-based buying trends and even customer visit patterns. Considering the fact that many retailers suffer from inefficient inventory planning due to poor insights into consumer trends, AI powered video intelligence solutions in combination with warehouse management modules can provide for efficient demand planning. This is done by understanding inventory and staffing requirements in real time and enables retailers to optimize resource utilization in order to reduce wastage.
Real-time view of store performance
For retail businesses, profit margins are thin and success depends on improving shopper traffic and enhancing in-store conversions. However, this requires store managers to be able to retrieve walk-in data and understand where conversions need to improve by deploying more staff or introducing engagement initiatives. With the help of AI, retailers can access store traffic data in real-time and even analyze the proportion of shoppers who leave the store within five minutes. With a high percentage of these drop-off customers reflecting the store’s inability to hold interest, retailers can then go about identifying whether it is due to crowding, lack of staff interaction or even the placement of different shelves.
By using AI powered data dashboards, retail businesses can view week-on-week trends in drop-off customers and tweak their actions accordingly. Additionally, by looking at the Path-to-Purchase funnel, further enhancements in the overall store layout can also be pursued to improve customer interactions.
Staff attendance & productivity monitoring
Managing store staff can be a daunting task for both standalone retailers as well as retail chains with multiple outlets. Most retailers still employ attendance modules that do not facilitate real-time visualization of available manpower and hence can’t cater to dynamic challenges arising out of staff shortages. AI-based facial-signature solutions can provide contactless staff attendance and total time spent on the shop floor, excluding breaks and other outings. With a centralized system, it is easier to plan shift rotations across stores and store owners can visualize their staff’s calendar in case of planned leaves to make suitable arrangements to ensure no operational or business impact. AI-based video intelligence systems can align footfalls with staff presence and generate alerts when there is staff shortage during high footfall time slots.
As AI develops further and more applications for machine learning, predictive analytics and deep learning technologies are experimented in the retail businesses segment, the entire retail shopping experience is poised for revolutionary changes in the imminent future. Our Enalytix Retail Intelligence module is a complete AI focused solution for retailers looking to leverage powerful data insights to help fortify their business volumes through increased customer engagement and higher loyalty. By configuring AI algorithms to specific store requirements, Enalytix’s retail-focused AI solutions can be deployed within three days of installation and help businesses utilize available opportunities to supplement retail volumes. To learn more about how Enalytix can help transform your retail business, reach out to us Click here
