With the help of SES Imagotag’s subsidiary Captana, independent Edeka shop owner Stephan Cunäus has increased the shelf availability at his E-Center Warnow Park in Rostock by three percent, he reported at the ECR Conference (ECR-Tag) in Frankfurt am Main last week. SES Imagotag and Captana, in interaction with cameras and ESLs, provide the required transparency over that part of the e-centre’s assortment of around 110,000 SKUs, for which the shelves are equipped with the solution. In addition to improving the availability of goods on shelves, Captana also helps the retailer to optimise processes and staff deployment and to increase customer satisfaction.
Captana monitors the shelves with around 250 wireless cameras in the Rostock hypermarket, which is part of the regional cooperative Edkea Nord. In the largest Edeka store in northern Germany, which was the model for the retail group’s Marktkauf conversion in 2018, images of the opposite shelf are only ever taken if there is no movement in the camera’s observation window for several minutes. This makes the use of the camera absolutely DSGVO-compliant. The Captana cameras use a wide-angle function and lens autofocus for consistently good readability. They can monitor up to four metres of the opposite shelf and up to 250 products each.
Electronic shelf labels communicate with the wireless cameras via the flashing of their LEDs –they thereby transmit the respective article number. The GTINs of an item recorded via the cameras are converted into structured data that is accurate to the product. This data is available to the store staff in real time in the Captana app. On the basis of the current shelf data, the app automatically generates individual tasks that are displayed to the employees via their mobile devices.
E-Center makes performance transparent
Within Captana’s dashboard, employees of Edeka Centre can identify out-of-stocks, wrong product placements and planogram-realogram execution at a glance with the help of visually prepared store data. The duration of an out-of-shelf situation is also analysed. The affected products are highlighted in colour and listed with product image, EAN and description. These features help employees of the E-Center Warnow Park to maintain the shelves more efficiently.
Stephan Cunäus makes the shelf insights gained through the Captana system also available to his staff in a prominent place in his store: all employees can constantly see the current status and the top or flop performance of all recorded shelves on a 75-inch-screen that is centrally located in front of the changing rooms and lounges of the approximately 185 employees working full-time, part-time and on a temporary basis.
In a store as large as this E-Center, automated processes in inventory management add up to significant time savings. Employees can use the time saved more effectively for advising customers. The measurable result: since Stephan Cunäus took over the E-Center Warnow Park in 2019 as Managing Director and in June 2021 as independent shop owner, he and his team have been able to raise the average receipt of his store from 16 EUR to 26 EUR. At the ECR Conference in Frankfurt, Stephan Cunäus commented on the success: ”Technology and people only deliver the best result together.”
Camera-based monitoring also tracks shelves at Monoprix and Coop Italia
Captana’s mini cameras, in combination with ESLs, are currently also scanning the shelves of the French banner Monoprix, which belongs to Groupe Casino, as well as at retail cooperatives of Coop Italia, among others. The store data collected in SES Imagotag’s Vusion Cloud platform help automate price and promotion updates and detect out of stocks, shelf gaps or misplaced items in real time.
