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COOKIE POLICY
In today’s increasingly competitive retail landscape, our client, a Fortune 500 retailer, recognizes the importance of leveraging technology and innovation to build a strong foundation for future success. They wanted to leverage their existing resources and available technology to optimize the customer experience and increase daily sales conversion rates. When the existing product market didn’t fit their requirements, the retailer sought out UDig to create a custom solution that could accomplish their goals.
As one of the largest rural lifestyle retailers in the U.S. with more than 2,000 stores, they possess a strong market share in rural communities across the country. However, with increasing competition from online and other retailers, they were seeking innovative ways to better serve customers and increase conversion rates. Our client understood that these goals could be accomplished through the increased and optimized use of technology by mapping and reporting customer and sales associate activity inside the stores.
When they tested potential solutions, they quickly identified pain points where existing products could not meet all of their requirements:
To create the custom solution, UDig knew it must first understand the business goals, operations, and technological assets. Given the scope of the challenge and the actions that had been taken, UDig understood the task at hand as well as the need to demonstrate what ultimate success would look like.
First Priority: Deep Dive
To begin, UDig conducted in-depth discussions with the rural retailer to comprehensively understand the company’s needs and goals of analyzing customer traffic patterns and leveraging that intel to improve customer conversion rates, provide greater support to sales associates, and improve the overall customer experience.
Integrated Approach
UDig understood that they wanted to leverage its current technology as much as possible to reduce the need for further expensive IT investments. So, UDig audited the existing IT infrastructure in order to leverage the full capabilities of current assets and proposed a design that required little incremental investment.
Second Priority: Map a Solution
Built upon our understanding of the needs, goals, and existing infrastructure, UDig created a three-phased pilot aimed at proving the success of a custom solution that leverages computer vision, a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers and systems to derive useful information from digital images, videos, and other visual inputs. Ultimately, our approach was to incorporate computer vision to provide them with the intel needed to make informed decisions, without the need to purchase cameras with integrated AI or for a third party to process the data gathered.
Final Priority: Implement, Test, and Optimize Pilot
Once the strategy was built, UDig implemented the three-phased pilot to evaluate its performance and retool as necessary. The three phases included:
UDig’s solution is helping drive sales, operational improvements, and enhance the customer experience by aligning intel gathered through computer vision technology with staff activation—all without the need to revamp or replace the current camera and in-store IT server investments. Specifically, the custom solution UDig created is helping analyze:
Ultimately, the custom solution has not only accomplished the initial goals, but it has also provided the client’s team with resources to develop additional use cases. The solution has positioned the rural retailer for future success and enabled the company to gain a competitive edge through the use of technology.
