Contemporary grocery stores face a diverse range of challenges. Alongside the demands of quality control and customer service, there is the pressure to reduce cost, manage waste, and operate sustainably.
Retailers must balance all of this in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment, which can be costly and time-consuming.
Many are now adopting wireless IoT sensors to simplify store management by providing real-time insights into customer behaviour and equipment and facilities performance.
Bengt Lundberg who is the CEO of Disruptive Technologies, outlines 10 ways grocery stores can improve performance with IoT sensors.
1. The reduction of food waste
Grocery store food waste is caused by a range of factors, with storage failures at the top of the list. To ensure maximum freshness and longevity of perishable produce, it is vital to maintain the optimum temperature and humidity of the storage environment. But when customers can access freezer cabinets, and businesses rely on manually checking refrigeration units, mistakes can happen, and equipment failure can be missed until it’s too late to remedy. With IoT temperature and humidity sensors providing continuous, accurate readings and issuing alerts when temperature thresholds deviate from the desired range, grocers can take evasive and remedial action before a loss occurs.
2. Mastering energy consumption
Retail stores are energy-hungry by nature. With IoT temperature sensors, managers can seek out opportunities to reduce energy consumption through better management of HVAC systems, helping with cost reduction while supporting the achievement of sustainability goals.
3. Taking control of maintenance
It’s almost impossible to manually monitor the temperature of refrigeration devices efficiently. With IoT sensors, the equipment can be continuously monitored, ensuring no anomalies are missed and allowing managers to identify potential problems and schedule necessary maintenance before they happen, avoiding waste and downtime.
4. Avoiding water damage
Water damage is a common problem faced by food retailers. Whether infrastructural, equipment-based, or weather-related, water can quickly cause significant damage within the retail environment, leading to substantial costs. Well-placed IoT water sensors can detect the smallest water leaks, alerting maintenance teams to the problem and enabling remedial action before the problem escalates.
5. Enhanced efficiency
When working on a large scale, efficiency isn’t always easy. With data from IoT sensors integrated into work order management systems, grocers are empowered to streamline maintenance, customer service, and environmental management operations.
6. Improved customer service
Touch sensors can be integrated into customer feedback panels and service buttons, enabling staff – and, where appropriate, customers – to call for support when and where needed, whether that’s to call for additional change for the cash desk or someone to provide customer information.
7. Regulatory compliance
Regulatory compliance is crucial for all grocery stores, but it can also be challenging to manage. With IoT sensors maintaining temperature data records and a data backfill function, which secures continuous temperature monitoring even if the system loses access to the cloud – grocers have an automated audit trail for all parts of their store.
8. Security augmentation
Security is an endless challenge for retailers. By retrofitting security systems – cameras, barriers, alarms – with IoT sensors, it becomes possible to gain a real-time overview of door and window activity. For example, motion sensors can detect if someone is in a room or a hallway after closing time, and proximity sensors can be used to monitor door activities.
9. Improved environmental control
When you take control of your building’s ambient temperature and CO2 levels, it becomes easier to create a healthy, comfortable environment for your employees and customers while helping to improve the longevity of your products.
10. Better customer insights
Understanding how and when the different parts of your store are used can help you to improve traffic flow and enhance the customer experience. IoT proximity, temperature, movement, and door sensors can facilitate this by providing real-time data on key areas of the store.
IoT sensors have been in use for about 10 years now. Still, it’s only been in very recent years that the technology has evolved enough to be accessible within the retail environment. They have become smaller, simpler to deploy, more cost-effective, and much more durable. Now, with IoT, and the collection of data throughout a facility, grocers can change the way they work, enhancing quality, customer service, efficiency, and sustainability while enabling the reduction of food waste. As the technology continues to evolve, the ways in which IoT sensors can be used to support a well-managed food retail environment are only going to grow.
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