The average size of a supermarket would go from 25,500 square feet to smaller that than 24,000 square feet over the next four years as grocers shift to compete on convenience rather than selection, estimates a research report published by Planet Retail. The changing digital times have limited the shelf space, and product innovation has become the most vital part for food producers to remain competitive. To overcome the challenge, RetailGIS developed an advanced SmartSystems platform to provide integrated store mapping, planning, project management, and plan-o-gram analysis solutions. “Our web-based tools are built to optimize the performance of every inch of the retail environment: every shelf, every aisle, and every store. We prefer the store-level approach that allows better decision making with dynamic, real-time data and analysis,” explains Amit Marty, CIO, RetailGIS.

The current retail technologies are facing a kind of disconnection from corporate users and store conditions, Marty acknowledges. Apart from the increasing numbers of smartphone buyers, he also points out the declining customer experience, basket size and foot traffic as the major threat to the modern retail industry. RetailGIS offers a number of web-based SmartSystem modules that organizes, synchronizes, and optimizes the product performance at store level. Their flagship product, SmartProject simplifies the project management process to provide real-time statuses on various tasks. “The tool allows the users to view the performances of key functions throughout each step in their implementation process. That means each store can see everything from where their vendors are to when new products hit the shelves, and then act accordingly,” explains Marty. SmartMap is a store-planning tool, which works in conjunction with other SmartSytems programs to optimize sales opportunities at the shelf. Their cloud-based application, SmartMap, allows customers to customize, import and export detailed store layouts.

RetailGIS also provides a Plan-OGram Analysis solution, SmartPOG, which has the ability to identify the strengths and weaknesses from SKU level, with localization for specific stores. SmartPlan can be used to plan a reflow or other what If scenarios and then can be used to push down to the store level for execution, visibility and to enterprise systems for Fixture, POP ordering.