INTERNET OF

THINGS IN RETAIL
BY- SADIA JABEEN
CONTENTS

• OVERVIEW AND INFLUENCE

• BREAKDOWN OF ITS RISE WITH EXAMPLE
• IOT APPLICATION IN REAL WORLD: STATISTICS
• RETAIL IOT IN USE
• A PRACTICAL APPLICATION
• MAIN OPPORTUNITIES OF IOT IN RETAIL
• RETAIL OPERATIONS IN REAL WORLD
• ANOTHER EXAMPLE: ComiQ’s EnGage PLATFORM
• FEATURE AND REPRESENTATION
• TECHNICAL SPECFICATIONS
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES
 OVERVIEW

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is causing a wave of disruption across

industry and it is the retail industry is poised to ride the crest of that
wave. Unlike any other sector, retail has direct contact with one of
the largest populations of potential consumers that fully embrace
technology and innovation. Retailers need to stay current with the
latest technologies to earn the loyalty of the next-generation
consumer and capitalize on emerging business opportunities.
• The Internet of Things is poised to transform the retail industry,
virtually eliminating the choice/customization trade-off and
redefining sources of competitive advantage. And the return on
investment may be more compelling than some retailers appreciate.
THE INFLUENCE
• IOT is re-shaping the traditional landscape of retail completely.
Through the deployment of sensors and the collection and analysis of
the data they generate, the IoT opens new avenues to influence and
augment actions.
• While elements of the IoT, such as product-level RFID sensors, have
long been used to overcome specific challenges in retail, it is the
smaller sensors, omnipresent wireless networks, increased computing
power, more sophisticated machine learning—makes the IoT poised to
have a broader and more transformational impact on business.
• It helps in giving a certain section of choices which a savvy
businessman can implement in his organization and help eliminate the
‘digital divide’ between the consumer’s ever increasing demands and
the retailer’s ability to deliver.
THE BREAKDOWN OF ITS RISE

• For most of retailing’s history, one important trade-off was driven by

the costs and benefits of carrying inventory. Customers made
selections from what was available. Providing a higher level of choice
meant increased inventory-related costs from sourcing, moving, and
holding a larger variety of products.
• As a result, such retailers required higher margins, achieved through
higher prices, to attain a comparable level of profitability as those
offering fewer choices. Alternatively, a retailer could provide fewer
choices and enjoy lower overall inventory costs, which it could pass
along to consumers in the form of lower prices or keep for itself with
higher margins.
AN EXAMPLE • To see how low-cost and
high-choice strategies
manifest, consider two
prominent retailers: Costco
and Target. Costco,
representing the low-cost,
low-choice approach, carried
just 4,000 stock keeping units
(SKUs) in 1995. Target, in
contrast, had 65,000 unique
products in stores the same
year, suggesting a high-
choice strategy (with
correspondingly high
inventory costs).
CONTD..

• It is worth noticing that none of these solutions is the best way.

The Internet effectively broke the cost-choice limitation in the
supply chain, contributing to the rise of omnichannel models,
and even more fundamentally, blurring the line between digital
and traditional retail.
• No longer is the customer limited for choices, with the option to
browse online, pick-up in store, or arrange delivery, every store
effectively carries the products of the entire network. Now
retailers can offer cheap with choice: the broadest range of
products offered at the lowest possible price—a true innovation.
IOT APPLICATION IN REAL WORLD: AN
EXAMPLE

• At Zara, clothing for each store is ordered and delivered twice per week, and
only 50 percent of its designs for each season are finalized ahead of time
(versus 80 percent at traditional clothiers).
• Zara headquarters consolidates customer feedback from across the globe,
assesses patterns, and makes changes to clothing designs in as little as two
weeks—a feat only possible thanks to the scale, scope, and speed of data
transmitted via the Internet. Customers can now get the latest fashions at
lower prices.
THE SOLUTION

• With the IoT, data that were either costly to collect or completely
beyond reach can now be generated, collected, analyzed, and
acted upon autonomously. For retailers, the growth of data—at
scale—on specific customers and their habits and preferences,
in particular, is enabled by the IoT. Coupled with new dimensions
of information, such as a user’s location, and advanced analytics
and artificial intelligence, retailers can guide consumers through
a seemingly bewildering array of choices to the precise items
they want, thus solving the “paradox of choice.”
RETAIL IOT IN USE

• Retailing giant Walmart heavily uses big data for consumer insights and
store-level merchandising. The company mines social media trends to
showcase types of products that are rising in popularity, and local weather
data is compared against historical sales data to boost grocery sales.
• Nordstrom tracks pins on Pinterest to see what products are trending, and
uses that on signs in-store to show shoppers what interests their peers.
• Disney has RFID-enabled MagicBand wristbands that provide theme park
access, entry access for guest hotel rooms, and cash and card-free payment
food and merchandise. All that activity is also tracked data that helps build a
better picture of how guests use Disney services.
• Online retailing giant Amazon is once again disrupting bricks and mortar
retailing with the Dash Button, a WiFi enabled device that is mapped to
specific consumer packaged goods products like laundry detergent. Stuck to
a washing machine, all a consumer needs to do when the current supply is
running low is tap the button and that generates an order, transaction and
delivery of a fresh supply of detergent.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION: ACCENTURE
STRATEGY
MAIN OPPORTUNITIES OF IOT IN RETAIL
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE
Customers wear wearable
devices to quickly scan and
call up product info.
They receive personalized
digital coupons upon
entering the store.
Customers use robots with
touchscreen for browsing
inventory that leads the
customer to the desired
product.
SUPPLY CHAIN REVENUE
STREAMS
Smart shelves in store in store Smart price tags that can be
which detect when the changed in real time.
inventory is low.
With aconnected pantry basic
Smart robots will aid in areas inventory arrives when
ranging from stock needed.
replenishment to product
assembly to handling
hazardous inventory.
Smart packing that monitors
age of goods or perishable
ones.
MAKING THIS INTO REALITY
• 1. Organization
One of the most important pieces of
driving the IoT-enabled agenda is ensuring
that the right culture, organizational
structure, governance and talent exist
within the company. Business and IT
leadership must work together to identify
opportunities to leverage technology and
ensure a strong partnership between IT
and the business, empowered by
executive leadership, to rapidly bring new
ideas and solutions to market.
• 2. Technology
A foundation of technical capabilities is
critical to enable the IoT agenda. IT teams
will need to build off of existing
investments in key areas such as big
data/analytics, in-store technology
infrastructures and internal and customer-
facing applications to take advantage of
the wealth of data generated by IoT
devices, while ensuring that the proper
connectivity and security foundations are
in place to support IoT-enabled initiatives.
KEY ORGANIZATIONAL ELEMENTS
REQUIRED FOR IOT SUCCESS
• A clear understanding of the business strategy to confirm that IoT-
enabled solutions are consistent with business strategy.
• An approach that prioritizes the impact and potential benefits of IoT
investments around customer needs.
• Alignment between IT and operations, marketing, supply chain and
other business stakeholders to confirm that IoT-enabled solutions are
designed and implemented with business needs in mind.
• A willingness to rapidly test—and fail—in order to find the right mix of
solutions and capabilities.
FOUNDATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CAPABILITIES
REQUIRED FOR IOT SUCCESS

• Compatibility and use of existing data warehouses and database

solutions for IoT applications.
• On-premise and proprietary data management vs. cloud solutions to
support IoT analytics.
• Middleware solutions and data interchanges that optimize speed of
queries for real-time analytics.
• In-memory computing
RETAIL OPERATIONS IN REAL WORLD
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: COMIQ’S ENGAGE
PLATFORM
• ComQi’s EnGage CMS is already deployed by top retailers and food service
brands.
• It uses the concepts of – drive customer loyalty and revenue, reinforce
brands, cross-sell and up-sell in stores, enable real time product promotion
etc.
• The basic concept here is –trillions of devices are connected and deployed. It
is these devices which can send data that can then be rolled up and analyzed
to provide rich, invaluable insights about activity and status.
• A motion sensor or security camera located at the gateway to a dressing
room triggers a notice to portable devices carried by sales associates, or at a
service counter. The sensor has logged someone standing there for more
than, say, 10 seconds, so help is dispatched and shoppers get a better
experience.
FEATURES OF COMQI’S ENGAGE
• ComQi’s EnGage is a mature, cloud-based content management platform
designed to support smart integration with in-store devices, including those
doing digital signage, transactional systems, in-store mobile, beacons, analytics
and more. EnGage is already in use by top retail banners globally, including Gap,
H&M, McDonald’s, and Victoria’s Secret.
• Built for rapid scale with an extensive API for development and integration,
ComQi enables retail technology partners to rapidly extend new services to their
customer base without opening costly, time-consuming new development
projects.
• The EnGage platform reflects more than a decade of research, development and
real-world experience. ComQi’s first generation platform was among the first in
the digital signage industry to introduce and leverage web services, deliver
solutions on a software as a service (SaaS) basis, and focus heavily on mission-
critical remote device management.
• Its roots in data-driven content also trace back more than a decade, applying
meta data to all aspects of its workflow, long before the rest of the market.
REPRESENTATION
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
• EnGage is designed with multiple points of extension and
integration. On the server side, the data feed subsystem can pull data
from a variety of sources, or have data pushed into it. A hybrid
SOAP(Simple object access protocol) and REST(representational state
transfer) API provide extensive means to command and control the
system.
• The EnGage Player is a highly extensible and robust end-point. Built
using Linux, these rugged, reliable devices act as data integration
points, fetching and transforming data from other systems. Via the
local player REST API, data and events can be published to the device
in real-time. The player’s extensive scheduling and programming
capabilities enable it to perform a broad range of playback and control
functions within the store.
CONCLUSION

• Our own thinking on the Internet of Things in retail continues to

evolve, and we expect to share additional perspectives in the coming
months. But one thing seems clear: Companies able to address the
thorny problems the IoT poses around data management, privacy,
analytics, and other areas will likely be well-positioned to separate
themselves from competitors. To truly build value from IoT
investments, retailers should be expansive in their thinking,
considering innovative applications and the use of supporting
technologies, such as augmented intelligence.
REFERENCES

• CONTENT • IMAGES
• http://www.comqi.com/internet-things-reinventing-retail/ • http://oncloudone.com/industries/retail-distribution/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/01/09/how-the-internet-of- • http://www.sprosty.net/internet-things-iot-disrupts-retail-channels-
things-will-shake-up-retail-in-2015/#7df370a42933 retailers-winning-private-label/
• https://www.sap.com/bin/sapcom/en_us/downloadasset.2014-09-sep-11- • https://www.iotuniversity.com/2016/02/internet-of-things-iot-in-retail-
18.the-ceo-perspective-internet-of-things-for-retail--top-priorities-to-build-a- impact-is-real-and-set-to-take-off/
successful-strategy-pdf.html
• http://www.comqi.com/internet-things-reinventing-retail/
• https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-internet-things-revolutionizing-
retail-industry.aspx • http://dupress.com/articles/internet-of-things-iot-retail-strategies/
• http://ioeassessment.cisco.com/see/ioe-work-retail-0 • https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-internet-things-revolutionizing-
retail-industry.aspx
• http://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Internet-of-Things-Making-Retail-
Industry-Smarter/1013380
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KkSMnZC3ks
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OptqxagZDfM&ebc=ANyPxKrzQF3oUQ
Gs7-GtH0HZm6vQL2FH3zaIhjDR8NU7lOSvyflBAo1xWwLQwEgf9iWokKm-
hldELJeQ0X9K-WcNDY62vOFREg
ANY QUERIES?