Colruyt has attracted a lot of attention in the retail industry with its innovative Easy Checkout system. Now, the market leader in Belgian retail is allowing its hardware supplier Partner Tech Europe to market the system to other retailers. This includes the vision recognition software developed by the Colruyt team itself, which reads a barcode as soon as the item is moved through a specific area.
Offering the solution to other retail companies seems like a bold move at first, as Colruyt’s scanning process is unique in the retail industry: employees take the goods out of the customer’s shopping trolley and place them in a second trolley after scanning them. The customer does not have to touch the goods at all for checkout.
The Easy Checkout system, which Colruyt plans to roll out to all 273 of its stores in Belgium by June this year and has already introduced in over 100 stores with an average of eight of these checkouts per store, retains the trolley-to-trolley process. However, instead of being scanned by an employee with a hand scanner, the barcode is captured by a fixed camera and read using the vision recognition solution developed in-house by the Colruyt team. Partner Tech Europe has been involved in the project as the hardware supplier for Easy Checkout for almost two years. The company uses Hikrobot cameras for this purpose.
“20 per cent faster at the checkout”
“Camera-based barcode scanning gives us a significant process advantage, simply because our employees have both hands free,” explained Frederic Spileers, Enterprise IT Architect at Colruyt’s IT subsidiary Myreas, on the Blue Stage at Euroshop at the end of February. With Easy Checkout, goods were scanned an impressive 20 per cent faster than with a handheld scanner, he reported.
Although Colruyt is currently the only retailer in the world using the trolley-to-trolley scanning method, Carl Christesen, Relationship Manager at Partner Tech Europe, is optimistic that other retailers will adopt the Easy Checkout version of the system, as he explained speaking with The Retail Optimiser. “There was a great deal of interest in this solution at Euroshop,” says Carl Christesen. He highlights two major advantages with good reason: Firstly, the process is extremely convenient for customers, who do not have to pick up the goods at any point for the checkout process.
Super convenient for customers
“The stress of packing goods after scanning, which is particularly familiar to German discounters, is completely eliminated,” Carl Christesen points out. Last but not least, retailers can make their checkout area much more cost-effective with Easy Checkout: “The considerable costs for checkout desks are fully eliminated,” says the Partner Tech Manager. The solution could be particularly interesting for cash + carry market or warehouse club operators, as it is particularly well suited to very large purchases.
Sales staff at Mars Wrigley, Perfetti Van Melle and Ferrero are likely to be watching developments with some nervousness, as Easy Checkout does not yet have a place for impulse purchases. For years, the branded goods industry has been investing heavily in the placement of chewing gum and confectionery at self-checkouts and will certainly come up with something for this new form of checkout area.
