CPG companies are seizing the day even amidst the pandemic. The overall global retail sales in 2020 grew by 11.4%, crediting its rise in sharp consumer demand spikes.
Despite the phenomenal sales growth, frequent store-level stockouts, supply chain strains, and rising consumer expectations dominated the headlines, forcing every CPG leader to take a long hard look on how to keep their store shelves optimally stocked, drive store sales and safeguard their market share.
In 2020 alone, enterprise retail brands have spent over $200B adopting advanced technologies such as Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, and in-store digitalization to supplement their supply chain operations and retail execution. There is a shift towards efficiency & optimization and a much-needed change away from excess production & waste.
Infilect technologies, a global leader in retail visual intelligence, is leading the change and empowering top CPG brands with real-time image analytics that helps boost their in-store sales and marketing ROI. To digitally transform worldwide retail through cutting-edge Image Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Infilect provides CPG leaders with real-time & actionable retail insights to help optimize their in-store retail execution. Having on-shelf metrics and competitive intelligence at the tip of their fingers, leaders are becoming more agile in decision-making to easily improve their in-store brand visibility, quickly address consumer demands and proactively prevent stockouts.
“In the past, CPG industries approached technology needs as piecemeal, but with the turn of the decade and the adversity it presented, brands are rapidly adopting transformative AI tools as part of their technology arsenal.”, says Anand Prabhu, Co-founder and CEO at Infilect technologies. He also adds, “CPG companies today need a robust AI engine that delivers a 360-degree view of their products, consumers, retail operations, and store-level sales performance to take meaningful and high impact actions. Retail Visual Intelligence will be a game-changer for the CPG brands.”
Retail manufacturers have always struggled to crack the code for delivering impact at scale with data-backed decision-making. Traditionally, retail execution and merchandizing involved a significant amount of manual intervention.
“Gathering in-store execution data at scale has been an age-old problem for brands. With an ever-expanding retail landscape and product assortments, manual merchandising audits are already posing serious limitations,” explains Anand. With Image Recognition and AI, gathering in-store execution data at speed and scale makes store audits automated and simplified. This is made possible by enabling merchandisers to capture a few pictures of the retail shelves using their mobile cameras. The Image Recognition AI then processes the captured images to derive critical retail execution & business insights. Leaders can now improve their in-store brand visibility and focus on enhancing per-store sales and achieving sustainable distribution & store fulfilment.
CPG companies swear upon how retail stores will always be the front-runner of the retail sales economy. “Anticipating demand, maintaining optimal on-shelf stock, and boosting in-store brand visibility can be challenging if one does not have accurate and real-time information. Image Recognition-powered actionable insights have advanced the retail decision making and enabled us to improve our on-shelf brand visibility, store compliance, and marketing ROI at a per-store level.”, added a channel sales leader of a leading food brand in India. Today, many similar retail brands are adopting visual intelligence as part of their digital transformation strategy to empower their sales and marketing teams.
“Sales performance will still be a challenge considering how consumers are quick to switch brands depending on the availability of products on the retail shelves. There is a need to track and manage, in real-time, many items belonging to various product categories displayed on and across thousands of store shelves. “With retail visual intelligence, the possibilities are endless. The traditional transaction-based retail analytics era will inevitably run its due course in time. Visual intelligence will be the new and exciting frontier for the CPG industry.”
Infilect is an Enterprise SaaS provider for retail manufacturers, brands, and retailers. With Image Recognition and AI innovations, Infilect’s products empower the retail industry with unprecedented visibility into omnichannel sales, in-store merchandising, and store operations. Infilect is trusted by global customers and partners and is backed by Mela Ventures, 1Crowd, and The Chennai Angels. For more information, visit www.infilect.com