Auchan
Auchan reduced price anomalies by 75% and improved OSA by 3% with Trax Retail Watch
In just one month, Auchan had 75% less price anomalies, 3% more OSA, and 250 hours in saved labor. When Auchan selected Trax Retail Watch to identify shelf availability and pricing issues in Portugal, data collected by Trax's Computer Vision-powered robotic cameras allowed the retailer to rectify issues a day earlier than before.
3%
Increase in OSA
75%
Reduction in price anomalies
250
Employee hours freed up
The Challenge
Auchan’s network of 34 hypermarkets in Portugal faced two obstacles. Replenishment issues were the most common cause of out-of-stocks. On nearly two-thirds of the occasions when customers looked at empty shelves instead of the products they wanted to buy, those products were in the store but not on the shelf.
A key part of the problem was the delay between checking for gaps and replenishment. The practice was to manually check shelf stock once a day, and then replenish the next day. By that time, sales had been lost. It was important to move from replenishment on the following day, to same-day replenishment.
Secondly, maintaining accurate shelf-prices is a very important but time-consuming and manual process. It was only possible to check one aisle per day, meaning checking the entire store took a month.
The work was repetitive, and often inaccurate, as there are many SKUs in-store and prices change a lot. There were also indirect costs from the extra time needed to address the issue at checkout, as well as having ill-effects on customer satisfaction. Since Auchan have a money-back commitment on price differences on shelf vs the till, they were losing money and shopper experience was also being negatively affected.
The Results
SaaS hardware inclusive model means ROI is possible from month one
The cloud-based Trax Retail Watch software determines any availability issues by comparing the identified SKUs with those that should be on the shelves.
At the same time, the software reads shelf prices from the images, and compares them with current prices. It also detects situations where there is no price tag for a particular SKU.
22 trained store staff are using the app daily
Availability or pricing discrepancies are relayed to
staff members via Auchan’s internal mobile app, allowing them to focus on fixing the problems instead of identifying them.
Out-of-stocks and pricing errors can now be rectified on the same day they are detected instead of persisting until the following day.
- Digital Director
- Auchan Retail Portugal
With the introduction of autonomous robots, Auchan wants to improve productivity in stores and optimize the supply chain, freeing employees to focus 100% on the mission of providing a better customer experience.
The Bottom Line
The benefits of Trax Retail Watch combined with automated data collection were evident almost immediately. In just one month, price anomalies had dropped by 75%, and shelf availability improved by 3%. The OSA and pricing improvements meant significant sales growth. Auchan also experienced workforce productivity improvement of 250 working hours per month.
Auchan can now use this time to continually improve customer service. The investment in technology resulted in six-fold ROI, and because the software and hardware package were delivered as a combined service, the ROI was felt from the very first month.
Product used - Trax Retail Watch
Our real-time shelf-monitoring and analytics platform reveals what’s happening in the aisles so you...
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