Is the quality of your operation data any good? What if you could be more agile and exploit more than 90% of the information you get from the POS?
That's what Danone Brasil, with a portfolio of products specialized in nutrition, has achieved with Involves Stage's Image Recognition solution!
You might be wondering how artificial intelligence can be used in trade marketing... Well, our answer is: to check the execution. A photo of the shelf is very useful to provide a lot of information about how shoppers-consumers are seeing our product.
In the case of Danone, before using this powerful tool, they only used a third of the collected data.
I used to analyze my database and think: here I have a huge amount of money and I’m not using it because the information that I got was not reliable, it didn’t have the necessary accuracy and quality".
With the Involves Stage’s Image Recognition, the multinational has achieved an automated, complete and detailed execution strategy that delivers dozens of indicators in up to five minutes from a single photo!
Besides being able to exploit more effectively the information we obtain from the points of sale, the solution provides us with other results that always surprise my team:
I use 93% of the POS information and I have a confidence level over 95%, then it means that my decisions are as assertive as possible. At that point, I have the critical mass needed to transform it into strategy."
The pilots with Involves started in 2019. The great challenge for the Danone merchandising team was to be increasingly efficient and reliable, according to the multinational's guidelines. In addition, in early 2020, Covid-19 became a reality. The new context had everything to become a great obstacle.
How to take care of people and business at the same time? In this period of uncertainty, Involves' Image Recognition was even stronger.
With Involves’ artificial intelligence solution, the time spent by field reps in stores was reduced from 20 to 5 minutes. This was possible because the team just needs to take a photo and send it to the system. The artificial intelligence scans it and points out the relevant indicators. This is how we reduced the survey time and the team of field reps started to spend less time in the stores.
This initiative that connects technology with the concern for the team enabled Danone's project “Taking care of people so that people take care of our business" to win the iCare award among 85 projects worldwide.
Danone needed to fine-tune the information. Even before the pandemic, due to time constraints, promoters could not collect data on competitors' products, they needed to focus on shoppers' experience and were looking for just the essential information. With the pandemic, the challenge became more pressing.
It was a “digital transformation”, as the team manager himself defines. Involves’ technology has improved the productivity and efficiency of the operation. The team started to “drink clean water”, as he also describes, in addition to using the information at the speed that the market demands to the benefit of the business, with technologies that are applicable in daily life.
With just one image of the shelf, the team is now able to have accurate information, with over 90% accuracy, on the following indicators:
Suppose you have the ability to know what your price is, your direct competitors' prices, and those of related companies, and how they change over time. With this data in hand, it is possible to design better routes, get better additional display points and increase our coverage capacity of the stores we visit by optimizing resources.
Involves' artificial intelligence solution is a computer system that can learn and, as it receives more information, identifies patterns and draws conclusions on its own.
Certainly the question is not 'when to get into this technology'. It is ‘Why haven’t I gotten into it yet?'. At some point, you’re going to get somewhere in the curve between manual data collection and image recognition technology. Manual data collection will definitely end its cycle. In the past, merchandising teams didn’t collect POS information, it was all about product replacement. Then they started to collect data manually. We are now seeing this revolution. So, those who haven’t invested in this technology will be affected and will be impacted by the wave of this market. If you start earlier will have a more competitive advantage and learn faster”.
The company was founded in 1919 in Barcelona (Spain), and has been present in more than 120 countries since 1970. It has a portfolio of more than 220 brands and has the Empresa B Corp Certification, which indicates the generation of positive impacts for society and the environment voluntarily through its business.
Founded in 2008, Involves is a Brazilian company that develops specialized systems for the complete management of point-of-sale execution, automating the retail execution operations, and managing teams by obtaining and analyzing information in real time.
With offices in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, its Perfect Store and Image Recognition software serve consumer goods industries and brokers, as well as agencies and service providers for the retail segment.
Involves' product portfolio is formed by the following initiatives: Involves Stage, Involves Doors, Involves Club, and Involves Experience.
Currently, they have more than 600 clients in 21 countries.
