Talking With...
Bob Henry, CEO and Co-Founder, IT Retail
It takes a grocer to know a grocer's needs — and the importance of knowing shoppers' needs. With software developed by a lifelong grocer, IT Retail, based in Riverside, Calif., helps retailers succeed by providing a comprehensive suite of grocery POS systems that allow users to accurately monitor sales, track customers, and analyze store procedures, among numerous other functions. IT Retail's POS software was designed as an easy-to-use solution that speaks and works the way grocers think and work, empowering supermarkets to manage their stores more efficiently.

Q: How did IT Retail get started and what would you say to people who haven't heard of the company?

A: I call us "the best kept secret in point of sale." I think the reason people might not have heard of us is because in 1993 when we started, we were the first to come out with a POS system on the (Microsoft) Windows platform. At that time Windows was not considered a POS-ready operating system. So we took our solution international, traveling to Mexico, Central America, South America and India and had a great degree of success. It wasn't until the last six or seven years that we've begun to focus on the U.S. and make some penetration here.

Q: What makes your grocery POS systems better?

A: Our focus has always been not to make a big splash, but to have happy customers one at a time. We wanted to deliver a great product at a good price. This has really been our mantra and focus of our company. What makes us better is that we offer a POS system that is completely open, giving our customer limitless possibilities, a system that is easy-to-use, while being one of the most robust and complete systems available for grocers.

Q: How is that, in turn, a benefit to your customers?

A: We are small and nimble and not caught up in a lot of red tape. Also, it's all happening right here in the U.S.. Our customers are the "meat and potatoes" of America — they are the entrepreneurs, the ones who are going out day by day and beating razor thin margins to make it work. These are the kind of people we want to be partners with and help succeed. It goes back to why and where we started this company — in the basement of a grocery store. I was a software developer and my partner was a third-generation grocer tired of the inflexiblity of the available POS solutions. We developed a system that works the way grocers think and is totally open.The result was a POS system that revolutionized the way grocers do business.

Q. Looking ahead, what do you see for the future of this platform and for IT Retail?

A: The Phone and the Cloud are the current trends. IT Retail will continue to look for new ways to make the shopping experience faster, easier and more informative for the shopper. For the retailer, IT Retail will continue to make the system easier to manage and information easier to get to the point where everything you could possibly want to know is available at your fingertips.

Retail Relevance
The Meal Planning Solution was designed by Intel and Kraft Foods to give shoppers just the right amount of information they need.
A grocery store shopper walks up the Meal Planning Solution one Saturday afternoon and identifies himself using a 2D barcode, called a QR code, created by the Kraft iFood Assistant App on his iPhone.

This code is linked to his shopping list of items he put together for an afternoon of watching football that coming weekend — finger foods, snacks, dips, some appetizers including chicken wings, hot dogs and hamburgers — everything five hungry men could want while watching the games, as well as some sweets for their children, who will be playing together in another room.

The shopper is immediately presented with several possible recipes he can create using the ingredients on his shopping list. Normally, the Solution's 'Just for You' selection of recipes is filled with healthy options, which are his usual preference, but this weekend is about snacking and having fun. What's more, a new snack product is suggested, and he is asked if he'd like to try a sample. He loves the new product, and adds it to his shopping list using the touch screen, which updates the list in his iPhone App. Ready to shop, he notices that the Meal Planning Solution has many of the items he needs displayed right there,

The remaining products on his list are picked up with a quick walk through of the store. Since his iFood Assistant App is tied to the store's loyalty program, he even received digital coupons on some of the items on his shopping list. Shopping for his Sunday get-togethers has never been easier.

While this is a fictitious example of someone using the Meal Planning Solution, developed by Kraft Foods and Intel, everything in the above scenario is possible today using the Solution.

"Our objective is to provide a solution to retailers that will not only help them increase their store visits and their basket size, but also engender loyalty among the people using it from among their shopping base by strongly engaging them," says Donald King, Vice-President, Retail Experience, Kraft Foods North America.

At the center of this engagement is the iFood Assistant, through which the shopper interacts with both the brand and the retailer. In its latest version, the application goes far beyond a mere recipe list by also providing mobile access to digital coupons and the digital scanning of product bar codes to build the shopping list. It ranks among iTunes top paid mobile apps.

As shown in the above example, the iFood Assistant is the starting point for interaction with the Meal Planning Solution. "The first thing you would do at the Solution is scan your 2D bar code which the application creates and links to your shopping list," says King. "The app is available on all mobile platforms — iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and Blackberry. It also links to your loyalty account with the retailer, if you have one. One of the benefits of having an electronic version of your shopping list is that it just helps keep everything organized. I've spent one time too many going to the grocery store with my mental list and leaving with everything I need — except one item. Having it all on the list and having it added automatically as I select the recipes I want to make is a huge benefit."

Once the shopper is logged in, that's when the magic — the "solution" part of the equation — occurs. The Meal planning Solution's video assistant asks the user if she would like to use the items on her shopping list, and then features recipes based on the list's specific items. "You may have entered items on your shopping list even though you haven't zeroed in on exactly how you are going to prepare them," says King. "This is where you find help in doing that. Recipes associated with your shopping list will fall under a button called "Just for You", and the user can also scroll through the Center's many options, which can include recipes grouped by specific dietary requirements or restrictions."

For those users who come across recipes they'd like to share, a facebook interface has been designed into the Meal Planning Solution.. If they choose to use the Facebook integration, they are automatically logged in when they use the Center, and can share recipes with their Facebook friends by clicking the "Like" button. The recipe then appears as a link on the user's Facebook Wall.

While the assistant at the Meal Planning Solution may be virtual, the product samples offered aren't, and a key part of engaging the shopper and enhancing the overall experience is the offering of relevant product samples that can be dispensed by unit. "The best way to convert somebody to a full-time user of a product is to actually allow them to experience it — assuming it's a good product," says King. "Of course, by the time we have cleared everything through all of our consumer tests and actually bring something to the market we are very confident that the product is good." Coupons can be given to the user via the mobile app for items on the shopping list or the sampled products, for redemption at the register.

The supplier's side
Considering the amount of consumer engagement driven by the Meal Planning Solution— the ingredient lists, recipe selection, recipe downloading, Facebook integration, and even sampling — a tremendous amount of information can be gathered by both the brand and the retailer from just one visit.

Multiply this by hundreds of visitors during the course of a week and that's an incredible amount of insights that can be gleaned by the unit — and Intel and Kraft have developed the tools to leverage this data real time.

"The overall initiative was to drive innovation in retail. Of course, technology is the basis of this innovation," says Shailesh Chaudhry, Strategic Marketing Manager for Retail at Intel. "We started this initiative, which we call The Connected Store Vision, understanding problems that need to be solved to help drive overall profitability in the retail industry — to better understand shopper behaviors, better understand their expectations, and then deliver on those expectations. This will enable us to drive higher traffic to stores, drive loyalty, and drive conversion rates by increasing options shoppers have today."

At the end of the day, he says, this means retailers have to do something that shoppers care about, and create solutions that solve some basic problems that impact their lifestyles, and the experience has to be helpful, but it also must be engaging, interactive, and fun.

At the same time, Kraft and Intel wanted to drive value to the retailer by creating an experience that is relevant to the shopper. "There is so much content available, but most of that content is not relevant," says Chaudhry. "If they are targeting the content, it should be relevant to the shopper, whether it's the advertising or the experience that is being delivered. So to that end, you must understand a bit about the shopper."

The Meal Planning Solution makes use of multiple Intel technologies to do just that. One of these is called Intel® AIM suite, a new anonymous video analytics technology that capturesaudience impression measurement. It delivers real-time audience data that basically consists of gender or age bracket information, based on predetermined rules that can be set by the retailer or the brand, it will tailor the displayed content to be more targeted to that shopper demographic determined to be in front of the display.

On the back end, that same data can be used by the retailer in conjunction with data about usage of the unit to better manage their inventory — such as recognizing that more adult males were using the machine for Sunday afternoon football snacking. The Facebook integration is measured as well.

"All of this measurement takes place on a real-time basis," says Chaudhry. "The retailer and the brand have access to it via the content management system. It is visible only to the retailer and the brand. This data helps with maintaining adequate inventory levels to prevent out of stocks, because if we can have better visibility into the items that are moving and what people are buying in real time, it helps us know what to stock, and how much of it to stock, as well as what digital signage advertising campaigns to run."

Another benefit of the MPS is its cost-savings via remote management of its systems. According to Chaudhry, 80 to 90 percent of problems that may occur at the Solution are slight ones that can be remotely fixed using Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT). This saves on maintenance costs, as you are not paying for a technician to visit the store to diagnose a problem, and in most cases, can solve whatever problems do occur via one centralized location. "This technology is also available in other store devices, as well, such as kiosks and point of sale terminals," he says.

All this, and fun, too!
Despite the complex technology behind the Meal Planning Solution, the Intel and Kraft developers behind the system threw some fun into the user experience by giving the shopper a chance to create a virtual bobble head figure using an image of their face captured by internal camera. "It snaps a picture of the person as they are using the unit, and puts their face into the form of a bobble head for a little in-store infotainment, if you will, to kind of punctuate the experience and put a smile of people's faces," says King.

Intel and Kraft are delivering solutions that enhance the user experience, while delivering additional ROI to the retailer.

For More Information, please Visit: www.intel.com/go/ic