Author: Detego

Detego, a market leader in real-time business intelligence for the fashion retail industry, will showcase three of its software solutions at EuroCIS, taking place from February 27^th to March 1^st 2018 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Visitors to Europe’s leading trade fair for retail technology can experience the Detego Smart Fitting Room, the Chatbot Detega and the Detego InStore Lean Edition as live-demos in hall 9 on booth #C03.

The mobile Detego InStore Lean Edition, a quick-start solution for the digital store, allows fashion retailers to quickly adopt a “smart” replenishment process and carry out “intelligent” stocktakes, by starting small and scaling across the entire store network. Offered as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model with cloud hosting, retailers benefit from high inventory accuracy and consistent article availability at low cost. Detego addresses retail chains, franchisees, as well as brand store owners. A clear path of scaling ensures a rapid deployment and an easy functional extension to the Detego InStore Full Edition.

The fitting room is the most important place in the entire store when it comes to purchase decisions being made. This means that it’s crucial to provide support and additional services for customers. These might include product recommendations, such as matching items available on the sales floor that can be brought directly to the fitting room by sales staff via a “call-to-assist” button. The customer can look up other products, check for availability, reserve articles or have them delivered directly from the store to their home. Links to videos or social media feeds can also help.

In the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Detego brings digital support to the store with its Chatbot “Detega©”. The virtual personal assistant accompanies customers throughout their entire shopping experience and provides additional support in the vital decision-making process, such as making product recommendations and earmarking other popular items, bestsellers, discounted articles or product variants.

The AI capabilities are not just limited to the chatbot itself, but also work continually in the background by communicating with other systems in the store. The chatbot checks the actual availability of articles and compiles data about customer types and their preferred article combinations and choices.  As a result, recommendations become more meaningful and personal and only articles immediately available in the store are recommended. This makes the chatbot a reliable sales assistant and tool that customers will use again due to a positive shopping experience. The chatbot can even continue to interact with the consumer after leaving the store and inform them about new offers, or reserve articles in a preferred store.

“We want to introduce fashion retailers to solutions that support them in their daily challenges,” says Dr. Michael Goller, CTO at Detego. “We can show how fashion retailers can positively influence buying decisions and how a chatbot helps in the sales process, as well as witness how several global fashion brands have successfully adopted the Detego InStore Lean Edition.”

Retail software vendor, Detego, will be showcasing its latest digital in-store solutions for retailers at NRF, the world’s largest retail industry show on January 14-16 in New York, as a co-exhibitor on SAP´s booth # 2733. These include a new mobile solution for retailers, offering faster and cheaper access to the benefits of digital connectivity, as well as Detega, a new chatbot that supports customers throughout their entire shopping experience.

Detego’s software, in combination with tiny radio-frequency identity (RFID) tags on every item, makes it easier for retailers to boost inventory accuracy and on-shelf availability to levels consistently above 98 percent – a huge increment compared to the industry average of 75 percent. While Detego’s chatbot opens up the entire store chain and digital catalogue to consumers.

Detego says that it has decided to release a leaner version of its full product suite so that retailers can quickly experience the advantages of RFID-enabled merchandise management, which include reducing the number of markdowns and fewer gaps on shelves.

“The launch of Detego’s InStore Lean Edition provides a quick-start solution that’s productive within hours, not weeks or months, without the complexities typical of most IT implementations,” says Detego’s CTO, Michael Goller. “Fully hosted and managed in the cloud, it is being targeted at retail chains, pop-up stores, franchisees and brand store owners who want to benefit from modern in-store technologies without the need to invest in fully fledged, large-scale IT projects.”

The new software is highly modular and scalable, meaning that retailers can start with just a few stores and scale to hundreds or even thousands within a short period of time. Additional features can be added at later time, including retail analytics, omni-channel services such as “click&collect”, and other consumer engagement and supply chain applications.

The  fully hosted and managed SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering that runs on SAP’s Cloud Platform enables retailers to seamlessly integrate systems across various applications. The combination of the SAP Cloud Platform and the analytics and merchandise software from Detego provides the basis for customer-centric processes and services, as well as real-time applications in omni-channel retailing. In the light of ongoing consolidations within retail chains, this gives fashion retailers a competitive advantage and differentiating element for their brick & mortar stores.

Detego’s new chatbot can be used at any time on a customer’s smartphone to help provide more pertinent product information or recommendations, based on real-time data on actual availability and customer preferences. The built-in machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities adapt to the ever changing dynamics of fashion retail, which means that results get better and better over time.

Detego, a market leader in real-time business intelligence for the fashion industry, is launching a new mobile solution for retailers which will give faster and cheaper access to the benefits of digital connectivity. Thanks to imbedded radio-frequency identity (RFID) tags on every product, benefits include being able to painlessly carry out stock-takes on smartphones and near hundred percent inventory accuracy, so fewer gaps on the shelves and no lost sales from missing sizes.

“Most retailers are aware of the advantages of RFID and want to constantly monitor the movement of goods, but many are put off by the perceived high costs of system integration,” says Detego’s chief executive, Uwe Hennig. “With the cost of tags having fallen dramatically over the last few years, the time is right to launch a new, leaner version of our software so that retailers can quickly see for themselves the gains being made in smart tracking devices and the endless opportunities of joining the Internet of Things.”

Detego’s InStore Lean Edition provides a “quick-start” solution for retailers that want to start small and possibly scale over the entire store network later on. Available via the cloud, it is being targeted at retail chains, pop-ups, franchisees and brand store owners that don’t necessarily want to invest in large-scale IT projects, he says.

The new software allows retailers to constantly monitor inventory in real-time and automate the replenishment process, not to mention improve both the availability of products and customer service. A clear path of scaling makes it possible to roll-out the software and later add other Detego products or functions at any time, including additional applications for all in-store processes and omni-channel services such as “click&collect”, as well as managing inventory throughout the supply chain, and comprehensive analytical features.

“The fashion retail industry in particular requires a fast introduction to the digital age, but at the same time a future-proof solution that is scalable,” adds Hennig.

Detego, market leader in real-time business intelligence for the fashion retail industry, is presenting in-store innovations at this year’s Paris Retail Week in cooperation with its French integration partner IER. The leading trade fair in fashion retail will be hosted at the Expo Paris Porte de Versailles from September 19th to 21st, 2017, and represents the largest cross-channel event in Europe, combining e-commerce and digital in-store topics. At the event, Detego will be demonstrating how fashion retailers are using RFID-based merchandise management to set the base for the Digital Store and actively drive in-store consumer engagement through intelligent fitting rooms, so-called Smart Fitting Rooms, and the chatbot Detega.

Fashion retailers, franchise partners and department stores are increasingly in need of real-time article transparency as well as analysis in the store; the basis for that is an RFID-based merchandise management that enables fashion retailers to provide their customers with a high level of article availability and reliable information on item-level. In addition, new technologies are required to ensure that consumers really relate with the brand and the store. Detego offers the right solution for both challenges and presents innovative in-store applications for the French fashion retail market that traditionally plays a leading role in the fashion industry.

„The fitting room is the place were buying decisions are made. With the help of interactive technologies, fashion retailers want to enter into dialogue with their customers in this stage of the buying process. Today’s digitally engaged customers expect an optimum shopping experience, this also includes online-experience in-store. Chatbots, for example, support customers in their search for articles and in checking article availability as well as provide product recommendations”, Uwe Hennig, CEO at Detego, explains new developments in the market.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as self-learning systems should help to relieve store personnel. Therefore, chatbots take on the conversation with the customer when no sales assistant is available at the moment or offer self-service in the store for customers who initially do not want personal advice.

Visitors of Paris Retail Week will have the opportunity to engage with these new in-store applications first-hand.

Specialist retail software provider, Detego, has successfully eliminated over three million stock shortages during various pilots and ongoing retailer projects after using merchandise management software powered by artificial intelligence to help combat perilous out-of-stock situations.

Thanks to tiny radio-frequency identity (RFID) tags attached to every item and the real-time monitoring of articles from warehouse to store using connected devices, Detego is trying to make sure that missing sizes and gaps on the shelves are no longer such an issue and headache for retailers. Projects have shown high article availability and near hundred percent inventory accuracy when using IoT technology and the AI powered Detego suite, compared to an industry average of around seventy percent in most fashion retailers’ businesses.

The AI software is also being used to analyse vast amounts of data and uses machine-learning to better understand the behaviour of several million consumers, deriving insights and actionable recommendations for retailers, it said.

Analysis shows that the vast majority of shoppers today still favour visiting a store. This trend is particularly strong in fashion, although a growing proportion are switching to other omni-channel options, including shopping online, via smartphones, or click-and-collect from nearby stores.

“Even with all the advances of the digital age, more than 80 percent of retail sales happen in bricks-and-mortar stores. In the fashion industry, customers still want to walk into shops to see, touch, and try on different outfits. While customer motivations for entering stores are largely the same as they were twenty years ago, their expectations are much higher. Customers who can find anything they want on their smartphones in seconds expect similar instant gratification in stores. They want the items they see online to be available in the store and in their preferred size, style and colour,” said Uwe Hennig, CEO at Detego.

Detego has seen significant growth in omni-channel services this last year, recording over 1.5 million omni-channel transactions through its software suite.

“Omni-channel services like click-and-collect are another important cornerstone for connecting the best of the online world with the benefits of bricks-and-mortar,” said Hennig. “Customers now expect a seamless, unified retail experience across multiple channels: for instance, being able to click on and reserve any items discovered online for trying on in a store the next day.”