Retail execution is increasingly growing complicated, making it crucial to be executed well. With growing consumer demands and increasingly crowded supermarket shelves, FMCG brands need better control of their retail execution while focusing on ways to fuel per-store sales. This was the focal point at the FMCG Leaders Roundtable 2022 held in Sydney on December 7, hosted by Infilect Inc and CatMan Consulting, a category management company based out of Sydney.
Infilect Inc is a leader in retail visual intelligence that provides image-recognition-powered retail execution insights and competitive intelligence to top global FMCG companies worldwide. Infilect empowers sales and marketing teams to optimize their retail execution at scale with real-time insights (within 60 seconds). Enabling better communication with field teams, and improving merchandising and promotion effectiveness, hence leading to a significant boost in per-store sales.
At the roundtable, Anand Prabhu Subramanian, Co-founder & CEO of Infilect Inc, shed light on the perennial challenges encountered by FMCG manufacturers and retailers worldwide that impact store sales. This includes frequent out-of-stocks, low brand shelf share at a store level, poor implementation of promotional displays, and poor adherence to planograms and pricing compliance, which has been detrimental to delivering what consumers want.
“The need of the hour demands gaining complete visibility of how products, promotions, and pricing are displayed to the consumers in-store. FMCG brands are now challenged to make effective retail decisions and to build winning strategies in a short window of time. This is where image recognition technology could be the winning edge”, adds Anand.
“Image recognition” is the ability to identify, recognise and distinguish images and assign them to categories. In the context of machine learning, image recognition is the ability to identify objects using an array of numerical values. It is a coalescence of computer vision and artificial intelligence that translates to the ability of software to identify objects, products, places, people, logos, buildings, and several other variables in a digital image.
“Automation, leveraging artificial intelligence has opened new possibilities in the FMCG sector,” said Malay Shah, who leads business transformation at The Iconic. “It has proven to deliver tangible benefits to the business such as distinctive insights, faster service and increased flexibility, scalability and productivity. The adoption rate globally has been rapid.
“The on-shelf availability has been a complex problem to solve in the retail sector. The introduction of image recognition and the ability to interpret data at scale using machine learning will drive value for the category and substantially improve shopper experience,” said Malay, was one of the leaders at the roundtable.
Brands using image recognition today gain better control over their on-shelf SKU availability, ensure 100 per cent promotional and planogram compliance, and identify retailers or stores that violate compliances, hence better spending their trade budgets in incentivising stores that offer better brand visibility and are consistently compliant.
“The very sole purpose of AI and image recognition is to make retail decision-making easy for sales, marketing, and category teams and answer fundamental questions in FMCG business. Where and how are my products stocked and in what quantity? Is the right assortment of products present on the shelf for consumers to find them? How are consumers viewing my product? Is my promotional message being delivered effectively to them? Is my product pricing competitive?”, said Nick Jones, category development director at CatMan Consulting.
Image recognition coupled with AI-powered recommendations helps to analyse competitor strategies and get personalised recommendations on the distribution of the right assortment mix based on consumer demands. This can be achieved by integrating per-store level sales data with the image recognition platform. Brands can also offer targeted pricing or discounts and better arm you to address changing market dynamics with speed and agility.
As another attendee leader Rod Lewis, CEO of Food-as-Medicine company MediKane said: “This technology should be extremely valuable for managing the on-shelf positioning for our products in a competitive landscape dominated by the large international players.”
The Australian FMCG market has seen a steady rise in strategic investments in digital transformation and AI solutions to supplement their retail operations and businesses post-pandemic. Image recognition will be a powerful arsenal for the future of FMCG sales growth.
About Infilect: Infilect’s image recognition and artificial intelligence solutions are purpose-built for CPG brands that empower sales and marketing leaders with real-time and accurate on-shelf metrics and in-store retail execution insights to simplify retail decision-making and boost per-store sales, at scale. Headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and with an office in Delaware, US, Infilect’s solutions are fast to set up, priced affordably, built to delight, yet powerful enough to deliver critical business outcomes. Infilect today is scaled across 16+ countries, covering more than 400,000 stores and processes more than 25 million images per month.
For more information, please visit www.infilect.com
