Coles teaming with Microsoft to make your grocery shop better
Coles has recruited Microsoft to help build the supermarkets of the future, with artificial intelligence to order stock based on the weather and tailor each store’s product range to its neighbourhood.
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Video cameras which monitor shelves for continuous stocking and a thinking computer program which adjusts stock ordering based on weather patterns and local community events.
Meet the supermarket of the future being rolled out by Coles.
The supermarket giant has struck a major partnership with tech giant Microsoft to use artificial intelligence to transform its supply chains, stock ordering and shopping experience.
The partnership is the latest major technology investment by Coles which is building massive new automated warehouses, smaller robotic-powered centres to fill online orders and linking its store network with fibre optic cable.
The investments comes as Coles works to provide shoppers with a much more individual shopping experience and strip out $1 billion in annual costs over the next four years.
Chief information and digital officer Roger Sniezek said harnessing artificial intelligence would create a far more efficient and accurate stock ordering processes.
It would also allow the retailer to “hyper tailor” a store’s product range to its neighbourhood.
That meant fewer empty spots on shelves, fresher produce and a better range of products shoppers in a particular location wanted, he said.
“If you take fruit as an example, demand can be affected by a huge number of things — the weather forecast, local events, kids going back to school,” Mr Sniezek told Business Daily.
“Feeding all that into an AI algorithm gives us a much more accurate forecast of what we need to deliver day by day, which will give customers much better availability and freshness.”
Coles has hired Microsoft to build an enterprise data platform to combine and co-ordinate all information pouring in from its stores and loyalty program.
The Melbourne-based retailer processes more than 1 billion customer transactions a year while its Flybuys loyalty program has 6.6 million members.
Coles will also use Microsoft Azure as its cloud platform.
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Microsoft engineers will join Coles’ innovation lab which is tasked with coming up with the next generation of retail innovations.
At the moment the lab, located in Melbourne, is testing software which scans camera feeds from stores to identify stock outages.
“Can we look at all of the shelves and figure out where there are gaps and then help our team members in store prioritise the replenishment of those gaps?” Mr Sniezek said.
Both Coles and Woolworths are investing heavily in technology as personalisation and convenience emerge as new key battlefronts to win over shoppers.
The adoption of artificial intelligence and automation will also lower costs as they confront a new generation of discounters such as German heavyweight Kaufland, as well as established rivals Aldi and Costco.
Microsoft worldwide commercial business executive vice president Judson Althoff said artificial intelligence would help create a “personalised, seamless experiences for shoppers”.
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