Retail Intensive Care

Retail is detail. The age-old adagium is as relevant as ever. Even with sophisticated operations and advanced control systems, getting retail operations right is extremely challenging.

Every shopper know how their local food retailer can get overrun by a weekend crowd and then completely lose its normal look and feel: empty shelves, misplaced products, broken products, disheveled shelves, crowed isles and an overall stressful shopping experience. The normal operations procedures and control systems can be severely tested during a peak load.

Actually, that’s those are the moments that matter most. Bad experience weigh heavier in the customer experience and even a single stock-out can risk the jeopardize the whole basket or loyalty to return. Retailers obviously know this and go to great length to be ready for the peak and get their shelves and operations in good shape.

For ages, retail operators have relied on tight management procedures and being on-top of every detail. This requires a huge dedication that is hard to expect from employes. This is also where we see entrepreneurs, i.e. franchise owners or shop owners, outperforming employees running a shop for a system franchise chain.

Operations control has had some recent advancements with automation (self-check-out, ESLs), data science and AI, e.g. improved scheduling, data science for PoS analytics. Still, the core underlying challenge remains and improvement is still as welcome as ever. Even the best-in-class retailers still accept 3-5% stock-outs as their cost of doing business.

Intensive care for your retail operations

At MOOS we listed to the store operators struggling to keep their high service standards and set-out to create an ‘intensive care’ system that can help address these challenges.

In the table below, you can find a clustering of a few typical retail challenges, how traditional retail operations might be deployed, how advanced systems might be able to help and how the MOOS intensive care can unlock a whole new set of benefits.

Challenge	Operations	Advanced systems	MOOS IC
Shelf Availability Timely replenishment from back-of-house Especially for high-rotating, high-margin items (e.g. F&B: red-bull)	People & planning Plan multiple check & intra-day replenishments for selected items Extra personnel to check & correct shelves	DS PoS data science approach: flagging items deviating from expected sales pattern Camera’s to scan front-facing ‘gaps’	Trigger action Flag when shelves need attention, e.g. ‘running low’ Integrate control, count, correct and replenish tasks in store operations
Perfect shelf Fallen/misplaced products Breakage/spillage Front-of shelf, front-facing product placement	Excellent execution Checking and correcting, over and over again Detailed check lists and task control for in-store personnel by the store / section manager	Spot checks / help Automated controls, e.g. with object recognition in overhead ilse camera´s	Trigger action Check if´perfect shelf´ conditions are met Flag and correct as needed Diagnostics to prevent reduce shrinkage risk
Theft / shrinkage High-risk items (e.g. alcohol, OTC, cosmetics) Sweep theft (full shelf), e.g. infant milk, razor blades	Theft prevention Dummy item on shelf; pick-up at the counter Product lock, e.g. bottle-cap Frequent personnel checks	System control Camera’s picking-up suspicious behavioral Check-out control for risky / outliers transactions	Trigger action Flag suspicious shelf transactions for additional check Diagnostics to prevent reduce shrinkage risk
Specials Promotions Seasonals Secondary placements, displays, gondola ends, islands Introductions with in-store marcom	Specials Detailed procedures Third party operations for certain shelves or specials (e.g. shelf-rackers) or full category mgt (e.g. OTC shop-in-shop)	Feedback loop Vendors deploying 3rd parties for store-checks Using POS for (delayed, aggregate) analytics	Trigger action Flag stock-outs or actions for the specials Diagnostics to improve productivity (see our blog on doubling promo ROI)
Placements Shelf space allocation Shelf placement & routing	People & planning Planogram Collect feedback from daily operations & make adjust (where possible)	People & planning POS analytics to revise planograms Planogram spot-checks & measurements	Critical insight Historical pattern of shelf actions (picking, placing-back, restocking) that are critical for optimization Create visibility in multiple placements

Actually, it’s not either or. The MOOS system is not necessarily a replacement for operations or system advancements. If implemented well, they can complement each other and you can benefit from synergies amongst them.

How does the MOOS Intensive Care work?

It all starts with an extra pair of eyes on critical items on retail shelves to flag where a corrective action might be needed. So, place the MOOS sensors on shelves for the selected critical items, power them up and get the insight to get in control of your shelves. This can be done in a very non-intrusive way. Customers don’t even have to see the sensors, as they can be tucked away in nearly all of the current shelf solutions, thereby retaining the look & feel of the store format.

For the personnel however, it can be a game-changer. Rather than following a fixed schedule of actions, the MOOS system can flag with an action is needed, e.g. count, correct, check or replenish from the back. This can be deployed back-of-house on a big screen or fed into the store handheld or app that personnel uses to get & execute their tasks.

Outfitting a small set of shelves can come a long way.

Many retailers know their high-rotation, high-margin, high risk (shrinkage), high impact (traffic or experience) items intimately. Some even flag them to their staff, e.g. with a poster or (hidden) signaling the top 25 or 50 items that need ‘special care’ from the personnel.

We can start their. This quickly makes a business case highly attractive, because you can achieve operational gains with relatively confined investment and scope. We can help make the diagnostics for you with a simple set of screening analytics. This can also help size the business case before you need to invest anything. We have proven cases that show a quick path to impact and are also happy to demonstrate this in your retail setting. Just get in touch to explore together with us.