How IoT is Shaping Up The Future of Retail

THE FUTURE OF RETAIL IN 5 IoT USE CASES

Discussions around the future of retail and the digital transformation tend to focus on the shopper/customer experience. But it’s important to take note of how deeply IoT can affect store owners and employees, as well as commercial equipment manufacturers.

Connected equipment is producing more data than ever before, but these massive pools don’t always translate into successful business outcomes. Smart equipment data, when integrated with advanced IoT analytics solutions, is redefining the retail space – enabling companies to create new business models, drive revenue growth, achieve operational efficiencies and increase customer engagement.

A connected commercial refrigerator tracks the inventory and internal temperature to ensure optimal conditions. Equipped with sensors, it measures temperature, humidity, number of products per shelf, compressor information and GPS location. The data generated by these sensors empowers store owners and manufacturers with many IoT driven use cases:

1. Asset Management: Reduce the number of fridges disappearing without permission
2. Predictive Maintenance: Anticipate diagnostic issues and reduce downtime
3. Predictive Replenishment: Forecast sales with usage and consumption data
4. Customer Engagement: Use data from multiple sources to deliver a personalized experience

1. ASSET MANAGEMENT

Space management is really important to increase productivity, reduce operating costs and increase financial performance. In retail, fridges are strategically placed to maximize exposure and drive sales. But once installed, there is no system in place to track their whereabouts if moved. 

Mnubo’s SmartObjects solution tracks the assets status and location, allowing manufacturers  to flag assets with impending faults as well as identify missing or misplaced assets. Dynamic maps highlight the distribution of registered fridges as well as the distribution of fridges sending events. Drilling deeper, users can identify fridges that are sending events from a location that is different from where it is registered.

The Business Outcome: operational efficiencies and a reduction of lost or stolen assets

2. PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

Commercial fridges typically follow a calendar-based maintenance schedule. However, when equipped with sensors, we can predict maintenance issues that might affect power consumption  or monitor temperature fluctuations to ensure food safety.

Mnubo’s SmartObjects leverages real-time and historical data to predict when assets will require maintenance moving from calendar based to predictive maintenance. The service dashboard, considers multiple factors, and sorts stores by “asset health score”. In other words, the future of retail will be smarter and more data-driven.

The Business Outcome: operational efficiencies and reduced downtime

3. PREDICTIVE REPLENISHMENT

Typically beer and other merchandise is sold to stores on a calendar basis or as a reaction to a purchase order .. but not based on consumption. In addition to consumption, there are multiple factors that influence sales – holidays, sports events, weather – by failing to consider these, stores risk running out of inventory. 

SmartObjects considers multiple factors to proactively forecast sales for the next period. The marketing dashboard sorts stores by “predictive replenishment”, highlighting the stores that will run out of beer in the next two days.

The Business Outcome: Increased profitability for the beer company and retail store, and supply chain optimization.

4. ENGAGEMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

Throughout the customer journey, there are many touch points to influence the purchase decision. Seventy percent of consumers choose their beer at time of purchase. However, point of purchase remains a challenging conversion point.

SmartObjects scores users based on consumption and engagement. The marketing dashboard filters users with engagement scores between 0.6-1.0. The brand can then suggest personalized coupons and discounts when consumers are in front of the fridge.

The Business Outcome: Revenue growth and new sales opportunities

5. NEW REVENUE STREAMS

IoT data has the potential to create new revenue streams – for example dynamic pricing. Research demonstrates that sales are higher when a product is placed on the middle shelf (compared to the top or bottom).

But it is challenging to measure shelf value, when relying strictly on sales data and failing to consider location and the fact that no two stores are identical. Dynamic pricing models enable the brand to charge for shelf space depending on location and aisle

The future of retail is clear: asset management, predictive maintenance, proactive replenishment and personalized marketing are transforming the retail space from product to customer-centric.

Mnubo’s SmartObjects solution empowers brands with real-time visibility over their connected install base.

Find out how manufacturers leverage Mnubo’s SmartObjects to reduce churn and drive brand engagement