Blog: Storevolution™ Applied in Real Life

In a previous blog article, we looked at Storevolution™ as an approach and a program to support retailers coping with continuously changing processes in retail. We also discussed its four guiding principles—consumer centricity, store digitalization, high connectivity and Store as a Service— in more detail and how those principles can help retailers in designing, enabling and operating frictionless consumer and staff journeys.

Today, I’d like to take a closer look at two real-life examples in which the Storevolution approach was applied in practice.

IKEA Restaurant Says Bye-Bye to Barcodes
IKEA is probably one of the best-known brands in the world today. With 374 stores worldwide and over 160,000 employees, IKEA is the world’s largest home furnishing retailer. Since its inception in 1943, IKEA has always been keen on introducing new products and shopping experiences that better meet the needs of its customers. For IKEA customers, efficiency and convenience are key, not only when it comes to shopping in their large stores to find furniture and home decorations, but also when customers visit the restaurant area inside the IKEA store.

That’s one of the reasons the home furnishing giant introduced iTray in one of its Italian stores. iTray is an award-winning “automatic food recognition system” combined with a self-service solution based on Diebold Nixdorf’s self-checkout technology. Using artificial intelligence (AI), cameras and sensors, the restaurant visitor only has to place his tray under the sensor; within seconds the iTray device will automatically recognize the dishes on the tray, without the need to scan barcodes or manually enter any of the food items. The consumer now only needs to confirm the products and can then proceed with the payment (watch how it works here).

This solution benefits both the consumer journey—no more queues, faster checkout and more convenience—as well as the staff journey, where their time is now freed up to better service consumers. With iTray, IKEA Italy won the EHI reta award for the best in-store technology solution in retail in February 2020.

Innovative solutions like iTray require a well-thought-through store digitalization concept, encompassing all equipment, software and related processes to help reduce friction in the consumer journeys. Store digitalization, one of the four cornerstones under Storevolution, supports staff while fulfilling consumer service journeys, optimizing consumer experiences by removing ‘friction’ as much as possible and, in the end, lowering TCO for the store operations. In other words: store digitalization is all about using technology to design and enable better, smoother journeys for consumers and staff. Think about self-service technology, for example, but digital apps and mobile self-scanning solutions also fall into this category. 

Remote, Proactive Maintenance Saves Millions
A large UK retailer is also leveraging the power of Storevolution. This grocery retailer needed to extend opening hours for its convenience stores, so stores were open seven days a week from 6am to 11pm. In parallel, the retailer wanted a solution that could better manage shopper demand during peak trading hours. They had already deployed thousands of self-checkout (SCO) systems but found store staff was still allocating a significant portion of their time to helping self-service consumers during checkout. Numerous interventions, like age-restricted items and items not recognized by the SCO system, were taking up a great deal of time for the store's staff. 

In order to solve this, the retailer implemented Diebold Nixdorf’s managed self-service solution for all stores equipped with self-service technology. This Store as a Service offering consisted of proactive, remote maintenance of their self-service hardware touchpoints. The result was a huge improvement in service call diagnostics: much faster call resolutions, higher “first-time fix” rates and overall, about 30% reduction in staff interventions. Thanks to Store as a Service, another one of the four guiding principles of Storevolution, staff can now focus on servicing shoppers rather than fixing issues. In the end it reduced operating costs for thousands of self-service checkout lanes, saving the retailer millions of pounds a year!

These are just two examples—and there are many more we could share that show the strength of Storevolution. These examples illustrate that Storevolution first and foremost is about creating frictionless consumer and staff journeys. There’s no doubt retail is evolving and redefining itself—especially as we all adjust to the impacts of COVID-19. No one knows for sure how COVID-19 will change the behavior of consumers in the long run or how will it impact the retail landscape. According to Jason Goldberg at Forbes, “the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the inevitable digital disruption of commerce.” It will require retailers to adapt quickly and flexibly. For us, the right response has always been Storevolution, a strategy that helps retailers cope with continuous change, with a clear focus on optimizing consumer experiences while lowering costs at the same time. 

Curious to learn more? Download our whitepaper on Storevolution today!