Vision Group Inc.
The Essential Tools to Measure Retail Performance

Auditors of consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands and retailers manually execute merchandising audits to ensure planogram compliance. While offering a comprehensive view of their retail performance and customer behavior, the time spent, expenses incurred and blind spots uncovered prevent them from improving their performances in real-time. Assisting retailers and CPG brands in monitoring and measuring their retail execution, Vision Group Inc., offers AI and IoT solutions that digitize and automate their retail operations.

The global group consists of three leading firms - Maxerience, Vision IoT, and InstaGnG –that facilitate clients in building strategies for execution across the omnichannel. From AI image recognition solutions, IoT cameras, and business rules engines to address industry pain points, retailers and CPG brands can utilize these solutions to plan the perfect store, design an effective planogram and track retail operations. This gives them a big advantage over their competitors with real-time performance measurements and digitizing and automating of their retail stores, while opening the door to successful product launches.

“One can only improve what one can measure. Our solutions provide retailers with the right information in real-time, enabling them to make the right decision that boosts performance,” says Karan Bakshi, President of Vision Group.

‘The right range, the right products in the right place with the right space’ is the tried and tested methodology to provide the best customer experience in physical retail stores. Housing Vision Group’s core solutions of AI image recognition and business rules engine, Maxerience offers PicToPOG and Studio 360 suite to its clients; a mobile application aiding in maximizing product performance on the retail floor.

Leveraging AI image recognition, PicToPOG develops editable planograms from an image or PDF. On the other hand, Store 360 suite employs AI image recognition and business rules engine to design the perfect store, provides prescriptive analysis on optimizing category management execution, and derives the compliance rating of the realogram to the designed planograms. Employing Maxerience’s solutions, retailers and CPGs can formulate the optimal placement of products, promotional materials, and pricing, while receiving real-time unbiased feedback on retail execution.

For stores located in remote areas where auditors may not be able to physically cross-check the category management execution, Vision IoT offers IoT cameras that can be mounted in aisles to provide a real-time, digitized view of the store. Not limited to remote locations and IoT cameras, the solutions provider creatively employs innovative IoT solutions, such as cameras and sensors, to track retail store assets like shelves and coolers, and to communicate inventory status and assess shopper frequency in real-time. Vision IoT offers digital insights, enabling clients to remotely monitor and obtain information on planogram compliance and inventory, and give suggestions for improvements of the store.

InstaGnG or InstaGrab-n-Go revolutionizes standalone business assets such as coolers or vending machines by leveraging AI image recognition to universally manage sales. It eliminates unnecessary costs of operating a vending system by leveraging its computer vision technology that identifies and tracks stock, monitors the condition of assets, and automatically analyzes sales data to provide detailed customer preferences. With a QR code for payments, clients employing InstaGnG solutions can maximize the revenue earned across multiple grab-and-go locations within a store and enhance customer experience with no salesperson or checkout required.

As an expert in providing innovative AI and IoT solutions that offer real-time insights into retail execution and customer preferences, Vision Group Inc.has helped retailers and CPG brands maximize their product performance on the retail floor. For instance, a beverage client planning to launch new products had come up with 2,000 PDF files of planograms received from retailers and approached Vision Group to convert them manually into PFL. In just two days, the company provided an editable planogram file with its PicToPOG solution. A manual approach would have taken two months. This enabled the client to re-negotiate a better space and placement of products and promotional materials, compared to their competitors.

Another client, dominant in the dairy sector, employed manual audits to measure their performance and utilized a small-scale competitive image recognition solution to devise a planogram. Due to the lack of scale and speed of providing feedback, they were in danger of losing the optimal space on the retail floor. They approached Vision Group Inc., and with its Store 360 suite, the client received instant feedback on category management execution and the compliance rating of the realogram compared to the planogram. This helped them increase their on-shelf availability by two percent.

Changing times have transformed the way customers shop in retail stores. Time constraints have forced shoppers to peruse shelves and coolers in a hurry. Measurement of the retail performance becomes paramount in this scenario. Vision Group’s solutions have provided those quintessential tools to achieve the same, leveraging novel technologies such as AI, and IoT, empowering them to take the better decisions to scale up.