Retail industry disruption and global events have led to challenges in growing businesses and developing a competitive edge. Technologies such as 5G, computer vision, and IoT enable retailers to create an optimal store and user experience. VMware Edge Compute Stack empowers retailers to transform customer experiences and drive operational efficiencies.
The retail industry is undergoing significant disruption due to global events that impact how and where people shop and how goods reach the market through an ever more complicated supply chain. Retailers face common challenges in growing their businesses and in developing true competitive advantage. Developments in technology – such as 5G networking, Deep Learning, mobile computing, and general computational cost effectiveness - are helping to enable the retail industry to respond to massive changes in how consumers engage with and derive value from retail experiences.
From the retail industry’s current technology trends and drivers, some key technologies are emerging as keystones for making the store truly optimal for the future customer experience:
Computer Vision
Real-time or Streaming Analytics (fast enough to interact with consumers)
Contextually Aware Computing - Relevant Decision Making (Inference + Reasoning)
IoT device management and data collection
Enterprise video distribution systems
Event Oriented Architecture and Routing (Data transformed to Event streams)
A lot of this demand is coming from the retailer’s stores and is reflected in increased complexity and velocity in the distribution centers, together we can refer to as “the edge”. There are multiple needs to be addressed. The need to provide customers with an engaging experience, the need for the retailer to have the right data and infrastructure available to guide and measure those experiences, and to make decisions in real-time. This is where Edge Computing can help.
By enabling critical business processes to run at the edge, companies can create game-changing benefits in customer experience, process efficiency, and business continuity. Retailers that adopt and leverage edge computing for time-critical tasks at the edge can improve profitability by increasing revenue from current and potential customers, reducing shrinkage, and decreasing costs through more efficient business processes.
VMware Edge Compute Stack (ECS) empowers retailers in the journey of transforming customer experience and digitalization of their stores. ECS addresses simplicity and scale at the edge and enables retailers to drive differentiation whilst driving operational efficiencies. Underpinned by AI/ML, data, & compute, VMware ECS enables the delivery of innovative retail use cases such as immersive experience, personalized shopping, loss and fraud prevention, and improving compliance and safety.
