As an expert in data extraction with over 10 years of experience in web scraping and proxies, I‘ve seen firsthand how intelligent automation is transforming the retail industry. With competition increasing, leveraging automation to improve efficiency, customer experience and growth is becoming a necessity.
According to McKinsey, 30-40% of retail tasks like merchandise planning and supply chain management can be automated. But RPA alone is not enough – by combining RPA with AI technologies like machine learning, NLP and computer vision, intelligent automation can help retailers automate entire processes end-to-end.
Here are some of the biggest use cases and real-world examples of intelligent automation delivering value in retail.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is a massive opportunity for automation in retail. Maintaining optimal stock levels across multiple locations is incredibly complex.
By applying machine learning algorithms to sales data, intelligent bots can dynamically predict demand and create tailored replenishment plans for each store. Computer vision can also enable robots to scan shelves and identify missing/incorrect stock in real-time.
Walmart uses computer vision in warehouses to scan pallets, track inventory and even restock shelves autonomously. This has improved their in-stock position and inventory accuracy.
Lowe‘s deployed inventory robots across stores which continuously scan shelves to identify empty slots, mispriced or misplaced items. This ensures products are available and shelf inventory data is accurate.
Customer Service
Customer service at scale is grueling without automation. Answering endless repetitive questions across channels like email, chat and phone calls creates dissatisfaction for reps and customers.
With conversational AI and NLP, virtual agents can understand customer questions, mimic human-like conversations and resolve routine support issues independently. This frees up human reps to focus on more complex situations and improve satisfaction.
Target deployed Nuance‘s Nina chatbot which handles 20,000+ queries per week across their website, mobile app and stores. It has reduced call volume by 30%.
Walmart uses AI-powered chatbots to handle simple customer service queries online, improving response times and satisfaction.
Invoice Processing
Processing invoices is extremely manual, costly and time consuming for retailers. Just matching amounts billed to purchase orders can take 25 days and incur $10 per invoice!
By combining RPA with OCR and NLP, intelligent automation can extract data from invoices, cross-verify details, enter information into systems and make payments without any human effort.
Consultancy Accelirate developed an automation solution that cut invoice processing time from 3-5 minutes to just 30 seconds, saving a retailer 160 hours per month.
Returns Management
With rising bracketing (buying extra with intent to return), efficient returns management is vital for profitability and customer retention.
Intelligent bots can guide customers through each return step, collect necessary info, update inventory systems and notify finance teams. Agents are freed up to handle trickier returns.
Recode Solutions automated returns processing for a large US retailer. This reduced call handling time by 85 seconds, saving $2 million annually.
Here are some recommendations based on my experience deploying retail automation:
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Start small, prove value: Pilot automations focused on pain points before scaling across the organization.
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Focus on repetitive processes: Tasks like customer service and invoice processing see the most dramatic gains.
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Combine technologies: Layer in AI/ML on top of RPA for decision making and seamless workflows.
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Reskill workers: Proactively train staff on new skills to focus on value-add work.
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Monitor continuously: Retail evolves quickly, so continuously enhance automated processes.
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Work with experienced partners: Retail has unique needs requiring specialized vendors.
Intelligent automation represents a huge opportunity for retailers to boost productivity, delight customers and unlock growth. Leading retailers are already seeing great success from targeted automations.
With the right strategy, any retailer can benefit from introducing automation incrementally. Prioritize high-impact use cases, demonstrate quick wins and gradually scale. With humans and machines working together, the future of retail will be highly automated yet still human-centric.