Three Problems of Retail That Could Get Solved by Video Analytics

What are the three problems of retail? 

A major issue in the retail industry is the decline in physical store visits. This trend was reinforced by the pandemic of the last years. So the retail sector is under pressure, with online options for purchasing clothes, equipment and even groceries having gained precedence. In order to remain relevant, retail stores have to keep up with cheap prices and a large range of different products.

Within the Covid-19 pandemic, this pressure is also put on grocery stores, because during the last three years, the market of online grocery supermarkets exploded. The concept of online markets has the benefit of ordering from home, it is also less time consuming because the products will be delivered to the customers' door steps. 

The high competition is not the only problem: a lack of adequate staffing and reliable data are equally harmful to business.

Long Queues 

Let's start with the end of the shopping experience, the checkout. It is the trickiest task for the employees, because they are responsible for short waiting times. They have to prevent long queues, that's why somebody from the team has to work close to the checkout to estimate the use of an additional checkout and in case of many customers, to open another checkout. The employee schedule in general has huge impact on the queue length; an understaffed store leads to queuing near the cash till.

Overcrowding 

Peak hours at retail stores get busy and a lack of space and service are the main consequences. Because expanding the store and hiring additional staff only for peak times is not the way to resolve the problem, owners have to react with a different and more simple solution.

Search for products

Due to the high competition, retailers have had to expand their product range to keep up. 

Higher product quantities can be confusing to customers because new shelves and a different order of product placement are coming along with new products. Customers are often thrown by the sheer quantity of products and the absence of a properly mapped out search system.

Why is it important to solve these problems?

The heading could be rhetorical because the answer is clear: to prevent low rates of customer satisfaction. It is a common fact that the most valuable good of a person these days is time and all the aforementioned problems of retail waste time. Losing time is a huge pain point, customers not only evaluate the product and price but also service of the store and thus the time consumption.

Because of many competitors especially online, the need of solving these problems is big.

What is Video Analytics?

In a nutshell, video analytics is collecting video data and summarizing it into KPIs. Video data is everywhere. One finds it at traffic intersections, to be used for highway patrol, in shopping malls and retail outlets, at airports and throughout different points in the city. What analytics entails in this context is the use of live video data to generate insights into a particular domain like real time occupancy monitoring for example.

The idea behind Isarsoft Perception is the use of security camera systems to their full potential. Isarsoft provides clients with a software solution that can be installed into a pre-existing camera system and can be deployed on-premise, on-edge or in cloud servers.

Video analytics are largely enabled by AI that is trained to count, track anomalies and identify patterns: all of which can be used to build a database for present and predictive analysis.

How Isarsoft Perception can solve these problems 

All three problems have one thing in common, they can be solved by better organization. And the key of the solution is to know as much as possible about the problem. Collecting all this information is a time and money consuming task. That is why video analytics is the smarter approach to tackle this problem.

Long Queues 

Isarsoft Perception can be implemented as a Queue Management system which uses the “Dwell Time” visualization to analyze and detect objects standing at the same spot. Read our article about Visualization to learn more. With that retail owners get a great insight on the working pace of their employees and about utilization of the market as well.

Overcrowding

By collecting accurate data peak times can be set certainly. Watch our video about door traffic counter to learn more about evaluating occupancy.

With the higher predictability, the shifts of employees can be planned more efficiently so more information is available when it is actually needed. The peak times can be set by analyzing the KPIs.

Search for products

People who are searching for a specific product can be detected by the visualization “Trajectory Map”. This setting shows the exact ways a customer walked, where the person stopped and where they continued walking. If an alarm for Dwell Time is set and then is triggered by a customer an employee can be sent to help.   

More about Isarsoft

With Isarsoft Perception, your camera systems become part of your business intelligence. Whether the goal is to increase efficiency, customer satisfaction or safety, Isarsoft Perception provides the insights needed for informed decisions.

Contact us, to learn more about how to turn security cameras into intelligent sensors.