IoT and Retail: The main challenges

IoT revolutionizes the retail industry

The Internet of Things (IoT) shows real potential to revolutionize the retail industry by providing new advanced opportunities for businesses to improve customer experience, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and drive growth. As various industries, and retail in particular, are getting more digital, the demand for innovations increases promptly. Things do not stand still and businesses require changes – they require cutting-edge technological solutions to boost their competitiveness and ensure the best service as compared to numerous competitors. And this is when IoT comes into play with its ingenious devices and smart solutions. 

Basically, IoT was brought to the retail sector to assist businesses in managing product inventory at scale. Yet with the emerging smart devices supporting the customer experience in a more direct, smooth, too. 

IoT-powered technologies do revolutionize the retail industry. Tech specialists all over the globe catch the wave and provide a lot of advanced software and hardware following the latest trends. Great demand creates a huge supply. As the world of business changes, retailers face new challenges, and developers, in turn, offer solutions to cope with them. 

The main challenges for retail businesses

Modern problems require modern solutions! Needless to say, customers get more picky and demanding, too. This is due to the extremely wide pool of options we now have. 

We can observe tough competition in the market. And to withstand it, remain relevant, keep the existing customers, and attract more new ones, businesses have to keep up with the trends and implement them timely with the help of tech consultants.

In order to make their stores digital, both small and giant retail companies start investing in prosperous networks, data centers, cloud computing, and client-oriented solutions. It all starts with minor changes, like managing air conditioning or lighting systems through IoT-powered devices, and proceeds with more sophisticated IoT solutions, such as traffic analytics.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most critical challenges the retail industry faces today.

Food waste 

Every year large retail chains have immense losses related to wasted or spoiled food due to the environment where the goods are stored. With such a large scale it may be difficult to keep everything under control and technical issues come up.  

How to solve this problem and prevent big losses? IoT environmental sensors allow monitoring of temperature, humidity, air quality, and other variables that are critical for managing the shipment and storage of perishable goods better. 

There are several well-established tech providers offering various feature-rich devices. Wireless Links, as one of the market leaders, offers IoT-enabled temperature sensors that can be built into the shipping container to send the real-time degree of the shipping environment to the retailers.

IoT sensors control the performance of specialized equipment like commercial freezers, refrigerators, and ovens to detect maintenance problems before they become critical and bring problems. 

IoT devices also provide detailed information, such as the time goods spend in transit or their storage temperature. This is especially useful for transporting perishable foods so that retailers can prevent extensive food spoilage. 

Predictive equipment maintenance

Running a retail business is not only about managing inventory. There are more other critical processes to pay attention to. Retailers should also watch their equipment regularly. This helps to identify any events that can lead to damage. Iot-powered sensors alert of changes in equipment behavior so necessary measures can be taken immediately.

Efficient inventory management

When it comes to food retail, ensuring efficient inventory management is critical. Inventory restocking is one of the most common challenges. Even with enough employees, it may be difficult to keep everything under control, especially in huge stores with multiple departments. Smart shelves are a smart solution indeed. They notify when an item is taken off a shelf, therefore, enabling quick supply restocking. Smart shelves with weight sensors, cameras, and other devices automatically recognize when inventory is low or improperly displayed so retailers can track where products are, and how much stock is left, and monitor the storage conditions.

Inventory lookup is another issue to cope with. When a customer is looking for a specific product, an employee can search the keyword on an application to find the exact location. 

Identifying misplaced items and shelves’ capacity is simpler now with the help of robots that take over some tasks and allow employees to focus on other responsibilities.

Other Internet of things camera sensors help with product placement by tracking people’s movements from the moment they enter a location until when they leave. Retail space planning software is also useful for maximizing the available physical space usage. 

People counting

Tracking the number of customers in a store and monitoring their movements throughout store space enable retailers to control capacity, identify congestion, optimize store layouts, address wait times, and more. 

LiDaR strips, blurred vision cameras, and people counting sensors allow employees to evaluate wait times for checkout lines, map the most common paths, and identify where customers linger.

Essential equipment tracking

Annually retail chains have massive financial losses due to stolen shopping carts. Moreover, you can often see carts scattered around the area where customers had left them before driving off. Replacing stolen carts and spending labor time gathering them back requires an effective solution. By tagging carts with motion tracking sensors and connecting them to an asset tracking software employees can control the assets’ positions and therefore retrieve them faster. 

Another advanced innovation is RFID tags that enable tracking product shipments as they reach checkpoints on their journey to the customer.

Digital price tags 

No more paper price tags that should be constantly replaced. It takes too much precious time and effort. Innovative IoT solutions allow you to free up your employees’ time letting them cover other intricate customer service responsibilities. Such giant providers as Pricer offer digital signage that gives retailers the infrastructure for creating electronic price tags. 

Quick checkout

Our life sometimes resembles a race where we cannot slow down. It’s true – we are always in a hurry so we hate waiting for long and demand services to be provided not only with a high quality but also quickly. If a store is overcrowded, shoppers often decide to just leave instead of wasting their precious time standing in long lines at the cashier. 

Automated checkout or self-checkout systems are developed to solve this particular issue. Shoppers can use specifically tailored apps where they have their online accounts. From there, IoT-enabled sensors that are embedded in the smart shelves send signals to user applications, so each picked off the shelf item gets added to the shoppers’ virtual cart. With such a system, customers can then just walk out of the store and pay themselves via the app. 

It improves the customer experience and reduces headcount.

IoT-enabled solutions that enable retail automation allow for improving the customer experience, reducing headcount, and streamlining workflow. This kind of personalization results in higher revenue respectively.

Personalized offers

Everyone likes that feeling of being special. Customers prefer to service or product providers that offer a personalized approach. Internet of Things systems are actively used in the retail sector to provide customers with personalized offers. The iBeacon technology, for instance, sends promotion and sales notifications to the nearest passerby’s phone via Bluetooth.

Using IoT sensors, beacons send app messages directly to consumers’ phones using deals and customer information to draw their attention toward particular store sections, based on their previous purchases. 

A bit of statistical data 

As Oracle’s report, The Impact of Emerging Technology on CX Excellence says, 

• 66% of surveyed retail executives state that IoT has already improved their customer experience processes.
• 88% of the respondents declare that using IoT in retail affects customer insight better as compared to other data-gathering methods. 
• 50% of current IoT users report better insight into their customers’ needs and preferences.
• 47% of the asked retailers are now able to provide a better and more differentiated customer experience with IoT solutions.

A quick roundup 

Various IoT-enabled devices have already proven to positively affect the retail industry by improving operational efficiency, enhancing the customer experience, and increasing revenue. Implementing top-notch digital solutions has the power to take your business to a new level. Following the latest trends is crucial for those who are willing to withstand the tough competition and expand their loyal customer base.

As per all the facts and numbers given above, we can conclude that IoT is a valuable investment for retailers looking to stay competitive in today’s market.