In 2020, Gartner placed computer vision technology in a ‘trough of disillusionment’ gradually heading towards the ‘plateau of productivity’ in 2 to 5 years’ time.
Its two years hence and powerful computer vision technologies are arriving offering you the opportunity to become one of the few early adopters and gain competitive advantage.
In 2021, the major milestone of over 1 billion CCTV cameras installed around the world was reached. What started as a security technology to prevent crime, the video camera is now a major visual data gathering device that will transform all industries including retail.
All These Cameras Have Eyes
Computer vision is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that trains computers to interpret and understand the visual world. By combining digital images from camera feeds and videos with deep learning, machines can quickly learn to accurately identify and classify disparate objects.
We spoke about emerging retail applications of computer vision in retail in our earlier article.
You Get a Change to be a part of the $33+ billion future of computer vision
The global computer vision market is expected to grow from $2.9 billion in 2018 to over $33 billion by 2025. According to a just published RIS News report, 10% of retailers have started a major upgrade of their computer vision solutions and nearly 17% more will deploy the technology in the next 12 to 24 months.
With the rise of e-commerce, consumers now expect a highly personalized shopping experience from any brand, not just digital-first ones. Computer vision enables retailers to offer a frictionless checkout experience, near-perfect inventory accuracy for omnichannel sales, promotional compliance to improve sales, and greater improvements in store operations, allowing store associates to focus on customer-oriented tasks.
70% of the customers make spontaneous buying decisions. They need accurate product and promotion information whilst browsing the store. 64% of retailers are looking to deploy data-driven solutions like computer vision in the next two years to optimize inventory. By automating inventory cycle counts with computer vision, retailers can update their inventory system in real time to create an omnichannel retail experience.
Studies show that shoppers encounter out-of-stocks every 1 in 3 shopping trips, costing $1 trillion in annual sales. Because computer vision essentially gives a computer “eyes,” there is huge potential for its application in retail loss prevention.
Computer vision has already proven that it can reduce employee theft at checkout by addressing major challenges such as sweethearting, where cashiers do not scan every item or ring them up at lower prices. By identifying every single item in the checkout area and associating it with a transaction, computer vision prevents ill-intentioned employees from attempting to steal merchandise.
Knowing which product is out-of-stock on which shelf at what time can help floor staff effectively restock and reduce out-of-stock incidents. Ensuring promotion merchandise is efficiently stocked in compliance with the promotional dates allows retailers to optimise sales and visibility of the products. Furthermore, ensuring system and floor inventory are aligned, makes it easy for floor staff to meet reordering requirements further cutting down on out-of-stock or overstock situations.
In addition to using data about customer behavior to make data-driven marketing decisions, retailers can also use computer vision to improve their store layouts. Computer vision-enabled cameras can track customers’ movements throughout a store and identify “hot spots” and inefficiencies to provide retailers with more insight into the performance of their store layout. According to McKinsey, COVID-19 has accelerated shopping behavior changes.
While many emerging technologies remain on the horizon, computer vision isn’t just a concept for the distant future anymore. Its current applications in retail show that this technology can transform the customer experience while optimizing retail operations in multiple areas, including inventory management, loss prevention, marketing, store layouts, and much more.
However, their adoption is limited to large retail chains and fulfilment centres. Naturally, as the hardware used to power the technology can cost a fortune. Now, with a billion CCTV cameras already on the floor, the only barrier to deploying computer vision in your store is technology that powers the camera making them ‘smart’. So, our team of experts created VIMS which provides your camera with ML/AL capabilities repurposing them to take stock and maintain compliance on the shop floor. Welcome to a more profitable computer vision optimized future of retail. Are you ready for the ‘smart’ advantage?
