News

Giant Eagle boosting customer satisfaction with digital inventory, audit tool

April 16, 2019

Giant Eagle is launching a pilot program with Simbe Robotics featuring an autonomous shelf auditing and inventory analytics solution in the quest to boost customer satisfaction.

The technology, called Tally, lets the supermarket chain tap real-time data to avoid out of stock experiences, according to a press release. The pilot is taking place at stores in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Akron.

Tally helps Giant Eagle ensure products are on shelves when and where customers expect and lets store associates work on customer focus rather than inventory tasks, according to the release.

In the pilot Tally sends data reports to store teams every 30 minutes that capture, report and analyze the state and availability of merchandise. Tally robots traverse the floors multiple times per day, scanning approximately 35,000 products across the center store grocery, health care and beauty aisles.

With the data, the retail teams can focus on controllable out-of-stock and pricing situations while optimizing each store's product layout.

"When it comes to the food retail industry, shopper experience is everything," said Giant Eagle spokesperson Jannah Jablonowski in the release. "If a product is unavailable at the time our customer wants to buy it, we've missed an opportunity and disappointed our customer."

Giant Eagle expects the technology to provide the following benefits:

• High accuracy inventory count of front facing items.
• Out-of-stock and low stock detection.
• Identification of misplaced items.
• Identification of incorrectly facing or oriented items.
• Product price tag validation.
• Third-party supplier compliance and vendor management.