nology comes into to its own . By utilising innovation , this is where you can give an organisation like Coca-Cola or Nestle a picture of what ’ s happening in stores across the world .”
To level the playing field against e-commerce giants , many CPG companies have ramped up their digitisation efforts . For decades many firms conducted manual audits and surveys to see how products looked on the shelves , how they compared to their peers , and whether out-of-stock items are being replenished .
This process is not only time-consuming and outdated , it ’ s also prone to error . Thanks to new technologies , this method is increasingly being dropped in favour of better shelf intelligence .
Take Coca-Cola , for instance , which is going to replace its manual auditing system in the US and trial a new technology from the Singaporean startup , Trax . Using mobile apps , fixed cameras or even robots , this platform takes images of product shelves using augmented reality ( AR ). Using computer vision and deep learning methods , the solution can then identify products and provide fully digitised shelf data .
“ It allows CPGs to make actionable decisions ,” notes Smethurst . “ It ’ s not just saying
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