Back

 Industry News Details

 
How the Cloud and Analytics Can Save Retailers a Bundle Posted on : Apr 24 - 2017

 Using predictive analytics powered by the cloud, retailers can more accurately predict demand and ensure they have the right products on store shelves.

What is a guaranteed way for a retailer to lose a potential customer’s business? Not having the item a customer wants to buy.

A clear way around that loss is to better predict customer demand for particular products, so that store shelves are not just full, but filled with just the right items.

Retailers are turning to a range of cloud-based tools and artificial intelligence to analyze a variety of factors that help make their inventories more efficient — and save money in the process.

Using AI and Machine Learning to Optimize Inventories

Blue Yonder, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning applications to aid retailers, last month partnered with U.K.-based grocery chain Morrisons to optimize product replenishment and automate ordering of 26,000 products in all its 491 stores.

So far, according to Blue Yonder, the technology is improving product availability, and the ordering system is reducing shelf gaps by up to 30 percent. The Blue Yonder system “automatically analyzes sales data and other data sources from Morrisons and combines this with external data such as weather forecasts and public holidays,

Via automated analysis of all the data, the system can predict the level of demand down to the individual product and store location, Blue Yonder says, and then fully automates ordering per store and per product. The Software as a Service (SaaS) system automates more than 13 million ordering decisions per day. Blue Yonder’s system relies on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

Using machine learning technology — a subset of AI which uses algorithms to detect patterns, and then can predict outcomes and potentially operate autonomously — the system learns as it goes and can use a vast and complex amount of data to make highly accurate ordering decisions, according to Blue Yonder. View More