Food Retailers Embrace AI Analytics
Two food retailers have recently turned to artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help run their food retail businesses — a world in which consumer behavior continues to shift thanks to the pandemic.
Bashas’ Family of Stores and Smart & Final recently signed up to use artificial intelligence technology from Hypersonix. More specifically, those retail chains will use the Hypersonix AI-based analytics platform — offered on a subscription basis — “to support the company’s real-time merchandising, marketing and enterprise analytics needs,” the technology vendor said. The deal comes as the food retail industry faces “unprecedented change and fluctuating demand patterns due to COVID-19,” making the use of leading-edge analytics even more important.
Built by former executives from SAP, PayPal and IBM, and funded by Intel Capital, Hypersonix offers a cloud-based Unified Data Analytics Platform that is designed to ingest and integrate disparate data sources that reside in software applications from various vendors. These applications include point-of-sale, e-commerce, merchandising, marketing, and inventory platforms. Hypersonix removes data silos and provides a 360-degree view of customer behaviors, localized product assortments and operational processes, to enable improved data-driven decisions.
“We look forward to seeing how Hypersonix can identify new growth opportunities from our data,” said Edward N. Basha III, president and CEO of Bashas’ Family of Stores. “We believe in innovation and partnership and finding ways to support our teams with advanced tools they need to better serve our shoppers and our community.”
An idea of the process involved with this AI platform comes from Smart & Final.
It has empowered non-technical stakeholders with descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics with the roll out, the companies said in a statement. The AI firm has also helped Smart & Final understand how its various customer channels are performing while optimizing each channel to serve the rapidly changing needs of their online and in-store shoppers.
