Part 2 $100 Billion Shrinkage Challenge: Transformation Through Retail Innovation - podcast episode cover

Part 2 $100 Billion Shrinkage Challenge: Transformation Through Retail Innovation

Oct 25, 202310 min
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Episode description

In this compelling episode, we speak with ITAB's leading figures, Leandro Blanc and Chris Bright, about the future of retail. From customer guidance to high-value item protection and breakthroughs in self-checkout fraud prevention, they share invaluable insights into ITAB's mission to redefine the retail landscape. Join us as we explore the balance between customer experience and loss prevention, setting the stage for the next era in retail.

Transcript

So, Leandro, thank you so much for the invite. What an incredible space you have here. So tell me, what am I going to learn today? What's in store for me? Welcome, Alex. First of all, thank you for coming. I'm really glad you made it to the showroom. So we're going to focus on mainly 2 things.

First, we're going to start with our approach, how we go about it in the In the first part, we discuss what the problem is, what the challenges are, and we would like to introduce our service solution, this one service. That's how we work together with retailers to to decide what's next step. And secondly, we're going to to focus on the three top priorities that we think are the main challenges of retailers today when it comes to loss

prevention. And we are going to show you specifically solutions around that. Chris, lovely to meet you. I've spent some time with Leandro and he's been taking me through E Tab Way and he's going to talk me through what you do in your in demo suites later. But I'm just curious if you don't mind telling us a little bit about what you do and how you help customers?

Yeah, sure. So my my role as Vice President of Solution Design, it covers different services but specifically if I think for this conversation it's around how do we actually improve the experience for the retailers customers and. Our role essentially if you take that as the main part all about experience, there's a Halo effect of the other things that we specifically pull out to ensure that we safeguard and also we mitigate risks to ensure that while improving that experience.

So from the current climate, the efficiency is key here. We look at reducing costs in store because you know to run stores today energy wise and you know general cost of living, it is a quite then and then finally. You know we want to improve sales and conversion. So you kind of got four things with the experience in the heart making sure that the other three kind of spur off that as a Halo effect go here. But every every customer has a

different specific. There's some common threads, yeah, but we work with the overall solution designed to run workshops, work with the senior leadership team, really understand the strategy and the pains and gains but through the the consumers lens. But you know, rather than me getting to the specifics. Why don't let Leandro sort of take you around the showroom and show you some of the examples. Brilliant. Thank you. So yeah, we're actually in the demo room.

Thank you. Tell me what we're gonna see. As you can see that it's a lot to see in the showroom, yeah, But we are going to focus on the top three challenges that we believe retailers are facing at the moment. First one is around customer guidance and how we make sure that the customers are following the sitting through. So I can't steal anything. I hope you're not. Oh no. The red lines have come on straight. I better put it back.

I don't want to get arrested. So that's that's again the 1st use case. Then the second is going to be around high value items. How we protect high value items without? Is there? Is there a figure for high value items? Is there like from your experience, is there a the number? I don't know. Is it more than €5? What's a? It depends on the retailer. So we are for example talking about beer, wines and spirits. It depends a lot on the range of

that retailer. But where we're seeing is that before retailers were protecting, I don't know wines over €30, but now it's that that range is going down. So I remember in the US it was shampoo and stuff. I was beginning to see shaving stuff behind. Threshold, it's going lower every time. So second it's going to be around high value items and 3rd is going to be around self checkered area which is probably the top challenge at the moment. OK.

So yeah, we're here, we are in the in the first use case, this is around how we guide customers through the store. It could be an entrance and gate like this one. It could be exit, it could be within the any specifics area or section within the store for example where. Deploying these kind of solutions around the beer, wine and spirits. So within the store for a

specific area got you. And there is a got thousands of aisles, yeah, I don't necessarily need to deploy gates at the beginning of my thing, I can just deploy it on the on the area that's most relevant. To me, it's up to you. It's up to the challenges that you are facing and that is a big element of the sign. So it's not just the the the hardware or just equipment and these like RFID gates like you know the ones I'm used to seeing, you know, like the big

things in the. In these cases for for entrance what you're seeing, but in the case of the exit gates, it comes with RFID integrated on them. So got you. Yeah, you don't need both this spirits and wines, a headache through the whole store in terms of protecting these things and then stopping it going out and then the friction that it introduces in the experience. How are these any different?

I would say that it's not well not only beer, spirits and wines, but also high value items in general. The same principles applies for electronics or any high value item that you have in the store, so. But what we're doing is we're working low with the smart tax and with this we are protecting the assets and the same time improving the customer experience and also making sure that we that we drive operational efficiency because to manage these tax and to log the the tax, it's much faster

than in traditional tax. And how and how is that? Why? For example, putting A tag with a traditional tag will take a few seconds because for example in this case you have these bottlenecks. Yeah, tax it would take. Anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds. In this case it takes a couple of seconds, yeah? And then to release it again. Traditional tags could take anywhere from 30 to 40 seconds. And its case is automatic.

They will be all right, so you don't have to wait for someone to come to the till to release it. And it also it's much much harder to to release it. And by your own means, so it's also and so then is this track through the store. It will track the items through the store. So we also have more control on what's being done with with the high value items.

Fantastic. We've had a whistle stop tour through the top three use case and now we're pay the final part of my customer experience and my path to purchase. So what are we doing here then? What? What are we looking at specifically? So so far we have focused on the 1st 2 use cases. Customer flow and customer guidance, how to make sure that the clients follow the the, the path on the shop floor that we believe are the right ones and to mitigate risk.

Then we went through asset protection and how we do that again in a way that it not it not only mitigate risk but also and drives efficiency and improves the customer experience. Yeah. And here we are in the last bit of the of the customer mission pay and exit, so. We have a few technologies, probably more than 10 use cases are covered in this area. Wow. OK.

But if we focus on the main two or three, which are the ones driving more value to the, to the retailers and to the end customers, actually would be fraud detection at the self checkout. Yeah. And then how do we manage the exit from the self checkout in a way that? We can make sure that that flow is as seamless as possible for for their customers. OK, well, let's take a look. I can see that it's already got computer vision here and we're looking at a screen.

So what are we looking at? This is, we'd call it, fraud detection solution of course, and it addresses different use cases. One is non scan, second one is product switch. So typical use case that someone will take a bottle of wine and put a label of bananas, yeah, whatever. And then the basket not empty, so. Finish scanning. You pay, but actually you have left products on the basket. OK, so. Let's see. Depending on the customer behavior, we track it with our

AI platform. OK, if you scan and you put the product on on this auditing babe bottle of olive oil, I've seen the £2.50. Yeah, €2.50. But then if you for example do not scan and just skip and then put the product directly. And you can see that there is an exception in the oh OK and that would trigger an alert to the check in manager that once you finish the the the transaction and you're ready to pay it will trigger this action for someone

to come. So Leandro, you've taken me through how you on a path to purchase on your shopping machine, you come into the store, high value items of the asset protected, how you're using computer vision, AI and data at the checkout. What happens on my exit? Well, we follow with the same principle to try to mitigate risk without adding friction to the mean, just walk out.

Exactly. If you follow the the the path that it's supposed to be followed by customers, you enter the safe checkered area, You scan your items, you pay, you get the confirmation that the that customer paid, Yeah, the gate so far, I'm a bad actor. The census said that that item hasn't gone through. What happens there then? Or you didn't pay, we didn't the confirmation, you didn't follow the normal flow within the sub target area. The gates will not open and you will need all right?

Sure, that happens automatically without any intervention. Thank you so much for taking the time and talking me through all these different experiences. How can people find out more? Of course, they can find us on our website etap.com, atab.com or in LinkedIn and we can get in touch and we can dive into more details on any of the challenges that we have discussed today. That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you.

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