From passive security monitoring to supporting revenue-generation: the journey of modern video analytics in retail.
Video surveillance systems have always played an important role in the retail sector. All over the world, malls, retail chains and stores deploy such systems to protect them from criminal and malicious security challenges.
But the retail landscape is evolving and so is the role of surveillance in retail. An increasing number of retail businesses now need surveillance solutions that can also help them optimize customer experiences, improve operational efficiency, and increase sales and revenues. Here’s where intelligent video surveillance systems with AI-based analytics come in.
AI-powered surveillance systems harness the power of various AI techniques like natural language processing (NLP), neural networks, and “self-learning” machine learning models, plus features like facial detection, object tracking and classification, and motion detection. These techniques and features allow the system to not only capture large amounts of video data from retail premises, but also analyze the raw data and convert it into useful information.
Based on these analyses, it can discern pattern tech contents the data, extract key information, and generate real-time insight tech contents easily-digestible, human-understandable form. These insights guide human judgment, action, and decisions for a variety of use cases.
AI-based video analytictechcontents an innovation propelling retail surveillance system to new heights. Modern surveillance systems with AI analytics capabilities go beyond surveillance and provide many more capabilities than simply keeping an eye on the business. These systems capture digital video data continuously and in real-time. More importantly, they analyze the data and deliver actionable insights, useful trends, and implementable recommendations.
Retailers can use all of this “data-driven businestechcontentntelligence” to protect their premises from many kinds of known and emerging threats. Equally important, the intelligence is also a valuable resource for creating business strategies related to customer engagement, customer experience management, customer retention, sales, marketing, promotions, and more.
AI-powered surveillance systems eliminate the need to manually sift through large volumes of video data for analysis and insights. Instead, video data is continuously captured and automatically analyzed to generate actionable insights. These insights enable retail decision-makers to better interpret activities on the retail floor and determine what action is needed to addrestechcontentssues, close gaps, and optimize business results.
For example, retail security teams get AI-generated reports and alerts that can help them identify blind spots, assess suspicious activities, and initiate appropriate action to deal with the identified problem, boost security, and prevent loss. The best systems also auto-initiate appropriate actions on detecting anomalous or malicious activities, reducing the burden for human personnel while providing more “eyes and ears” to better protect the business.
Inventory managers can leverage AI-driven demand forecasting to accurately predict customer demand and accordingly optimize the inventory. They can also analyze historical data and uncover trends to minimize spoilage and waste due to overstocking and avoid losing sales due to under stocking.
As we have seen, AI-based video analytics systems have a direct and tangible impact on retail security. Stronger security means better loss prevention, which directly impacts the retail business’ profit margins, profitability, and financial stability. But AI intelligence also creates many other opportunities to increase retail revenues and profitability.
For one, service managers can assess existing customer service processes and identify improvement areas in order to increase customer trust in the retail business. Higher trust can translate to higher sales and increased revenues.
Next, video feeds and insights enable marketing and sales teams to analyze customer behaviors and understand their needs. Based on these data points, they can design strategies to optimize customer journeys and experiences, which can also boost sales and increase revenues.
AI insights also help Mall owners and retailers to identify bottlenecks and congested areas. They can then implement tactics to manage store locations, customer flows and reduce waiting times. They can also optimize mall spaces, shelf space and store layout to further improve customer experiences, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately improve sales and profits.
If you have always thought that retail surveillance is only about security, it’s time to think different. With AI analytics, you can do a lot more with your surveillance system to optimize and grow your business.
To learn more, watch MVP-Convergint MEA’s webinar: Redefining Surveillance for Malls & Retailers: From a Cost Center to a Revenue Generator.