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Empty shelves, a shop filled with customers and no resupply in sight: Every retailer's nightmare.
The solution? The “Connected Shelf” - an intelligent, fully networked shelf.
Empty shelves, a shop filled with customers and no resupply in sight: Every retailer's nightmare. Empty shelves frustrate shoppers and lead to sales losses for manufacturers and retailers, which amount to roughly one billion Euro a year according to current studies. Customers show little tolerance for these so-called "out-of-stock situations" as they are able to purchase their products through other channels, including online and at other stores, or choose alternative products.
In order to make empty shelves a thing of the past, 4brands Reply – the Reply Group's company specialising in the optimisation of business processes between companies in the consumer goods industry and retailers – is developing the "connected shelf" – an intelligent, fully-networked shelf. In addition to reducing the number of empty shelves, the connected shelf allows stationary retailers to target shoppers and generate new insights about buyers, much in the same way that online retail does.
IoT technologies are setting new standards for inventory management and customer satisfaction.
New Consumer Experience
The use of IoT technologies enables the early detection of depleting inventories, thus permitting early preventative action to be taken.
Recommendations for buyers
The data captured in real-time at the shelves can also be used for cross-and upselling activities that are self-evident in online retail.
Shopper Insights
Data collected on the behaviour of shoppers when removing items from shelves provides store directors with a good basis for creating a more attractive shopping experience.
Simplified ordering process
The functional solution of the connected shelf designed for the store director gives stationary retail the advantages of online shopping.
Connected shelf for a new consumer experience in stationary retail
4brands Reply has developed a solution for a connected shelf: the use of IoT technologies enables the early detection of depleting inventories, thus permitting early preventative action to be taken – provided that items are available in-house – to restock shelves before they are emptied. What is new is that the detection and prediction of low stocks are not based on scanner data from the POS system but from actual stocks on shelves. Product counters installed in supermarket shelves monitor products in real-time as they are stocked and removed.
4brands Reply uses IoT technologies on the shelves and, with the help of the SAP Cloud Platform, has developed a cockpit which allows the store director to view current and impending shortages. The data is updated in real-time – including when customers return an item to the shelf. Store directors are thus given a constant overview of shelf stocks and informed of critical out-of-stock situations. With the help of predictive analytics, reliable forecasts are made for impending stock shortages. This solution helps store directors to efficiently manage the process of stocked items being removed from shelves. These measures help to prevent shopper frustration when items aren't available and prevent sales losses. What's special about this technology is that it allows out-of-shelves situations to be detected at the root – on the shelves themselves.
Cross-and upselling: Recommendations for buyers
The data captured in real-time at the shelves can also be used for cross-and upselling activities that are self-evident in online retail. Shoppers not using smart phones can be targeted via the display when removing items from shelves. In the competitive market, retailers can distinguish themselves positively from their competitors by offering their customers a unique purchasing experience that is already standard in online sales: The use of screens that display useful additional information or inform customers of promotions as they remove items from the shelves. Customers removing products are shown recommendations for complimentary products or current promotions ("3 for the price of 2", 10% discount for purchases of 3 items from the XY brand") via a permanently installed display. An additional opportunity: Customers receive suggestions for recipes when picking out food items and are thus encouraged to purchase additional items. The display is targeted at consumers interested in a specific product.
Shopper Insights: Data as a basis for decision-making
Data collected on the behaviour of shoppers when removing items from shelves provides store directors with a good basis for creating a more attractive shopping experience. If items are frequently being returned to the shelves, for example, is it because customers require more accurate information? Is a product more likely to sell if it's in a special location? The combination of scanner data with items removed from shelves provides information on the success of special locations: If, for example, 60 products are removed from a shelf in one day and a total of 100 products are scanned at checkout, that means that 40 products were removed from the promotional area. These shopper insights are valuable for manufacturers as well as retailers. An analysis of shopper interaction with regard to theft is also conceivable: If a large quantity of the same product is removed in rapid succession, a warning is triggered via the dashboard or a text message is sent to the store detective to warn of possible theft.
SAP Cloud Platform: Simplified ordering process
The dashboard solution uses the SAP Cloud Platform, the platform-as-a-service for processing data, as is typical for IoT scenarios. It processes mass data in real-time – in this case information on products stocked on and removed from shelves. Available predictive methods allow for reliable prognoses to be made from shelf shortages as they occur. The platform is fast, easily integrated with the back-end system and is run by SAP in secure data centres; it should, however, not be immediately integrated with the merchandise management system in order to optimise the replenishment process.
The functional solution of the connected shelf designed for the store director gives stationary retail the advantages of online shopping. The shopping experience occurs across all channels; consumers are targeted directly at the shelves in the appropriate context as they remove items. The omnichannel business can be improved and inventories optimised.
4brands Reply specializes in the consumer goods industry and supports companies in the design of their individual digital transformation processes with innovative IT technologies. 4brands Reply's approach focuses on the consumer with his Customer Journey, which covers the entire value chain of the company. The offer includes process consulting and system integration for the core areas of Customer Experience Management, Revenue Growth Management, management of Demand-driven Supply Chains, Enterprise Management and management of a Digital Data Platform.