2020 was a year of tremendous growth for online grocery shopping, accelerating way beyond our expectations. Companies like Instacart are raising mega-rounds in funding and likely preparing to go public, signaling that the online grocery boom will continue even after the pandemic ends.
Amid COVID, tens of millions of US consumers became online grocery buyers for the first time, contributing to a staggering 54% sales growth in online grocery last year. In 2021, this behavior will go from trial to habit for many as grocers everywhere determine how to best manage this new channel.
No matter if you’re a grocer using your own store team to support e-commerce orders or working with a third-party organization like Instacart or Doordash, the shift towards online grocery shopping presents both technological and operational hurdles.
From a technology perspective, the accuracy of your inventory in store just became even more critical to your business. When an order is placed online, the customer expects that item to be in stock and fears a call or text from the third-party shopper with a request to make a substitution.
Another challenge is that while a product may appear to be out of stock in its primary shelf position, it could be present in a second location. Plus, with stores now filled with new online shoppers who may not be familiar with the store layout, store personnel are bombarded with questions about where to find items, distracting staff from other tasks at hand.
So how can grocers take advantage of the burst in online shopping and still provide an exemplary customer experience?
It comes down to two simple, but historically difficult measures to track in store: what is actually in the store and where is it located?
Fortunately for retailers, Tally, Simbe’s autonomous retail intelligence robot, enables them to power their e-commerce efforts by providing data that both mitigates the risks associated with online orders and increases productivity in fulfilling them. As the only solution in the market able to truly capture product inventory status at scale across the entire store, Tally’s computer vision and AI capabilities provide a number of benefits:
- Product location – Tally maps every item in store on an x, y, z coordinate and translates that into aisles and sections, making finding products as easy as possible. This data can be leveraged for a store’s mobile app or apps used by third-party shopping teams.
- Product availability – Since Tally traverses stores multiple times per day, it can provide factual ‘on the shelf’ input, adding to the confidence factor that when a customer orders a product it’s actually going to be available.
- Product substitution – If a product is out of stock, Tally has the ability to indicate whether a similar item is available. This allows the customer to substitute at the time of purchase, avoiding the hassle of interrupting the shopper or the customer during the store trip.
Tally integrates with handheld devices to allow store members access to real-time product data
The result?
Whether your store’s e-commerce model is focused on buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) or working with a third-party, leveraging Tally’s data empowers shoppers and store members to be more efficient. Using Tally’s product location data as their guide, shop time and pick-and-pack in store are optimized. In addition to streamlining their path through the store, location data provides a point-to-point navigation from one item to the next that allows them to work seamlessly without disrupting store personnel.
Furthermore, using Tally’s data ensures that grocers have an improved fill rate for orders coming into the store, decreasing the number of substitutions. This not only saves time for the shoppers and staff members by providing a higher product find rate but also improves customer satisfaction.
Need help elevating the performance of your online channel? Let Tally help you do the hardest job in retail – knowing what’s in the store and where you can find it!
Request a demo of Tally!
