The UK retail sector is undergoing rapid transformation as it grapples with disruptions to supply chains, changes in consumer behaviour accelerated by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, and pressures to deliver on sustainability.

Without full-scale digital transformation, harnessed through the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and real-time data analytics innovations that help create ‘smart stores’, retailers risk rapidly falling behind the competition.

There’s a growing demand from retailers for fast and secure data - and lots of it - to keep up with supply chain needs and shifts in customer behaviour - who expect personalised, seamless and secure shopping experiences. 

It’s never been more important to keep up-to-date with the latest digital solutions on customer analytics, data transfers, inventory management, efficient energy management and enhanced in-store and cyber security.

Our recently published ‘Buying into the future of retail’ (PDF) whitepaper explores how smart technology choices involving AI and analytics can transform operations, customer experiences and sustainability, helping retailers stay ahead of the competition.

As one of the UK’s leading telecoms companies, we have an extensive network infrastructure and substantial experience providing high-performance connectivity services, powered by innovative technology solutions to businesses of all sizes. 

Our cutting-edge digital innovations, such as AI-powered Digital Vision, Active Intelligence (a world-leading data and analytics solution), 5G Private Networks and Internet of Things (IoT), are all underpinned by our future-ready infrastructure that can optimise operations, and drive growth for any retail business on its digital transformation journey.

Digital Vision is our computer-aided vision solution. As a form of AI, it allows retail systems to process and ‘think’, and the Digital Vision allows them to ‘see’. It provides retailers with valuable customer data, enhanced store security, and staff and workplace safety solutions to create the ideal smart store environment.

It does so by enabling retailers to analyse live and recorded video footage from cameras and run data analytics in real-time. This data can then be used to generate live alarms for store security issues such as anti-social behaviour and theft, and provide in-depth custom reports.

Digital Vision also provides businesses with invaluable customer insights through rich data, which can provide statistics on passing trade conversion, the number of people in store, average customer time in-store, heat maps and dwell time etc.

• Automatically converts video into metadata, improving response times, and driving operational efficiencies and new business models.

• Drives in-store revenue, leveraging CCTV footage to understand what drives conversions in-store.

• Improves staff productivity and optimises store operations by identifying underutilised store space.

• Enhances customer experience through identification of check-out queues and detection of vehicle overstay in retail shopping car parks. 

• Help monitor storerooms and back-of-house areas to better understand staff performance, to avoid intrusion, or notify if a lone worker has an accident.

• It doesn’t require installing new hardware and can be implemented using existing infrastructure.

Our Active Intelligence solution enables retailers to actively and continuously monitor, analyse and respond to real-time data and events, enabling them to make informed decisions based on up-to-date information.

Our partnership with EE, the UK’s biggest 4G and 5G mobile network, means that we have the biggest and the best mobile data set in the UK, and we know how to use it. 

• Cutting-edge data science combined with machine learning and data generated from 24 million mobile devices is a powerful resource for retailers to leverage. It means we can analyse the location, movement and web and app behaviours of retail customers.

• We also have the UK’s largest shopper-behaviour datasets, which is perfect for retail companies to make better informed investment decisions.

• We can help retailers analyse and quantify demand and catchment of existing stores, and the economic potential of new ones.

• Security of personal data is paramount to every retailer. We go to great lengths to ensure the privacy of data without compromising on the value of the insights we provide.