When running a retail store, there are a number of pointers in your check list that need to be ticked for successfully operating in a business day. This includes various activities such as:

Reviewing products in the store
Ensuring consistency of product displays
Managing inventory
Providing quality customer service
Maintaining overall compliance with company standards

This all funnels down to the process that ensures the process are intact and product count is maintained, aka Retail audit image recognition. Mainly, retail audits help to measure the performance of a business, but can also be used to document sales trends and competition status. It can also help you gain a deeper understanding of purchasing levels for certain products, the status of your inventory and supplies, and what else you can do to improve the customer experience.

Retail audits can also help ensure that your services and business operations are meeting your company’s established standards. This includes respecting safety regulations, labor laws, schedules, and organizational needs. They are investigations in themselves and are also necessary when performing market research. With the right retail audit programs and systems in place, you can effectively collect data from the start, allowing your business to grow and develop.

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How Does Retail Audit Image Recognition Fits into Picture?

Today, most retail store inspections are routine inspections conducted to evaluate compliance, store operations and product quality. These audits are led and carried out by regional managers, internal or external auditors, or field forces depending on their capabilities. The sole objective of these audits is to evaluate the effectiveness of the existing business strategy, identify the weak links and eliminate them in the next store plan. Here is an overview of how regular inspections of retail stores are conducted:

A field sales representative/area manager visits a few stores in their area to inspect the said site. The notified body is responsible for reviewing a pre-defined set of in-store metrics, such as the products of shelf, compliance to planogram, trade promotions, SKU distribution, product placement, adjacency, etc. Keeping in mind the findings of the agent, a report is generated and sent to the owner for their further planning and development.

However, since 2020 and the pandemic, the number of face-to-face inspections at such stores plummeted by more than 75%. The main problems that obstruct the efficiency of store audits:

Limited scalability
Lack of appropriate documentation
Visits susceptible to errors
High turn around time

With the image recognition in retail and AI, data collection in the store at speed and scale makes store audits to simplify automatically and simplify. This was made possible due to the fact that the sellers took several photos of the retail shelves using their mobile cameras. Image recognition AI processes captured images to provide critical information for business and retail order fulfillment.

What is Image Recognition in Retail?

Image recognition technology helps digitize and standardize audits, generating consistent, accurate data more frequently to help sales and marketing teams make timely decisions. Information interpreted by image recognition software can also help track sales trends: retailers can use data about how different brands and SKUs are selling to increase sales of preferred SKUs by placing them closer to customers. Infilect is the leader in visual intelligence for retail, empowering FMCG brands globally with automated store audits, increased in-store sales, real-time analytics and competitive intelligence.

Image recognition has a wide range of use cases, leading to deep-rooted dependencies across various consumer goods sales functions, including store audits. Image recognition has introduced “Click & Go” audits, eliminating the need for dedicated personnel conducting in-store audits to manually count and record field entries, instead allowing them to simply click on a photo of the store to experience it. This cuts down on store audit time with a super-easy mobile app for in-store image capture.

Benefits of Digitized Image Audits & How LIS Helps?

One of the biggest aspects of image recognition technology for retail audits is the transformation of visual merchandising by providing accurate, real-time insights into product labeling and brand compliance.

Welcome to the future of retail audits, revolutionizing the way retail audits are conducted, making them much more reliable, faster, and more informative than ever before.

At Love In Store, we are leaders in developing image recognition technology used during retail audits. These solutions provide more accurate information than anything else. Operating since 2017, our software is scalable and user-friendly to meet the specific needs of businesses from small businesses to multinational conglomerates, making innovation accessible to everyone.

Data Accuracy Over 90%
Cut Down on Store Audit Time
Automated & Instant Insight Generation
Exponentially Increased Store Reach
AI-Assisted Sales Recommendations