Goods Checker is an IT solution that automates all merchandising stages: creating and editing planograms, analyzing SKUs on store shelves, comparing displays against planograms and generating detailed analytics.
Goods Checker users have already improved the employee performance, made reporting at retail outlets faster by almost 3 times and increased the percentage of compliance with planograms from 60% to 90%.
In this article we will tell you what updates were available to Goods Checker customers and describe the benefits of each.
Table of Сontents
New features available to Goods Checker customers in 2023?
Recognition of goods from fixed store cameras, identification of POS materials on shelves, control via a chat bot in Telegram — these are just a small portion of innovations that became available to customers this year.
Mobile app: iOS, fixed cameras and vertical photo merging
- A multi-platform application was created. Thanks to this, updates to Android and iOS versions will be released faster, and all users will have the same version installed. This approach prevents situations where some functionality is not yet available to some users.
- iOS application released. Now managers and merchandisers have access to the Goods Checker functionality on all iPhones running iOS 16 and higher.
- Processing from fixed cameras is available. Where the company does not employ merchandisers, but it is necessary to monitor the display, Goods Checker can now recognize products on shelves from fixed cameras if they are aimed at shelves with goods. This approach reduces personnel costs, and there is no need to purchase additional equipment. All this helps to implement automation and improve display monitoring at minimal cost.
- Vertical merging of goods. Merchandisers are faced with the problem where, due to narrow aisles and walking customers, it is difficult to take a good photo of the rack. To solve this problem, Goods Checker can merge multiple photos together and generate one photo of the entire shelf. Previously, Goods Checker could only merge photos horizontally. But our customers talked about the problem of vertical display, when you need to take one narrow and tall photo. Now merchandisers can take several photos either horizontally or vertically and merge them together.
- Telegram bot (coming soon: WhatsApp bot). You can recognize goods using a bot. Proceed as follows. The merchandiser takes a photo at the point of sale or receives a notification from the camera, and then uploads the photo to the bot. The bot is connected to the Goods Checker neural network, which recognizes the goods in the photo and sends the labeled photo back.
This option is good for those who want to test the solution or who do not have the opportunity to install a mobile application (or it makes no business sense).
Product recognition
At the very beginning, Goods Checker only recognized products that had a clear shape, for example, bottles of water, juices, and boxes of chocolates.
We are now using the latest Sam model from Meta for recognition, which has speeded up the operations of Goods Checker and improved their quality. Goods Checker now handles irregularly shaped items; with goods that not only are on the shelf, but also hang on hooks. In addition, we recognize POS materials and price labels.
For example, our customers work with pharmaceuticals, oral hygiene products, holiday decorations, etc.
Web application: planograms and analytics
- BI system with detailed analytics and interactive visualization. Now it has become easier to customize the system to suit current business goals and track exactly those KPIs that the company needs. For example, if you need to monitor a competitor’s shelf share, you can add this metric to the report.
- Special zones introduced into the planogram. Now, when creating a planogram in the Plano Creator module, you can quickly select the number of cells, place additional products on the shelf for recognition, etc.
In addition, the interface design was updated in accordance with best practices. The entire interface is clear and even an employee who has not previously used such solutions can understand it.
Goods Checker team responds to customer needs and is constantly improving the application
Marketing agencies, pharmaceutical companies, retailers, chocolate candy distributors, and soft drink manufacturers are already using Goods Checker to improve the quality of their outlet audits.
Thanks to Goods Checker, merchandisers complete store audits faster and with better quality, and analytics are based on accurate and reliable data that becomes available to managers immediately after the audit.
Automation using solutions like Goods Checker helps to identify bottlenecks in merchandising processes, obtain more reliable and complete data that will allow making smart management decisions in a timely manner and enabling higher sales.
