How smart surveillance helps guide retailers safely through an uncertain holiday season

● IoT-enabled smart cameras offer retailers the ability to gather valuable consumer insights, while providing a safe and comfortable shopping experience
● AI applications can assist multiple retail sectors in enhancing customer experience and increasing sales conversions with actionable, intelligent data
● Video data can be used to determine staffing needs, analyze peak shopping hours and comply with mandatory social distancing, occupancy guidelines

November 6th, 2020 — Retailers who have successfully navigated difficult spring and summer months under pandemic-related health and safety guidelines are finding themselves facing new obstacles heading into the critical holiday season shopping. While many businesses have successfully reopened, the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the traditions of high-traffic, in-store holiday shopping are yet to be seen.

To assist in navigating these challenges, retailers should consider an option that considers the safety and comfort levels of shoppers and staff, as well as offers actionable business intelligence - such as smart surveillance cameras equipped with AI-enabled applications. Smart cameras today are essentially IoT sensors that can provide retailers with valuable real-time insights into customer behavior, using a wide range of applications that can be easily purchased from an application store and added to a security camera in the same way apps are loaded to a mobile phone.

With this in mind, Security & Safety Things (S&ST) outlines a few ways in which smart camera technology can assist retailers during peak holiday shopping as well as in daily business operations:

•  Analyzing customer shopping and people traffic patterns to determine average time spent in the store for optimized merchandise placement
• Determine shopper mood and feedback using video analytics
• Enhance customer experience by reducing time spent in waiting lines or checkout queues - creating a safer shopping environment
• Enable better planning for busy periods, identify potential bottlenecks and assess where extra signage for social distancing and proper facial protection could be required
• Use of heat mapping to determine products in high demand
• Assist in occupancy management through the use of people counting applications

While many shoppers are used to long holiday lines, this year brings additional concerns in terms of occupancy limits, social distancing policies and the comfort levels of customers with spending time inside a store location or indoor mall. Smart cameras can assist by identifying potential chokepoints near highly trafficked aisles, or at checkouts. This can allow retailers to ensure lines move smoothly, safely and that shoppers are adhering to proper social distancing guidelines. These same cameras can assess highly trafficked zones or analyze customer interactions with a particular shelf or area of a store - allowing for better management of on-hand inventory to meet customer demand.

Additionally, people counting applications will be able to better manage occupancy at entrances and exits. When maximum occupancy is reached, proper personnel can receive an alert to take action. To fully automate this process, retailers can install a screen that functions like a traffic light at a building entrance - effectively notifying individuals when they may or may not gain access. At the same time, object detection applications can identify if shoppers are wearing proper facial protection and alert managers to handle any health safety concerns.

When connected to point of sale systems, smart cameras can enable retailers to optimize conversion rates by analyzing the correlation between store or individual department occupancy and sales rates. Additionally, they can detect demographic data of customers, recognizing that a group of two adults and two children entering the store together is likely a family that intends to make a single purchase instead of four potential customers.

For more information on how store managers and retailers can leverage video analytics to gain enterprise-wide operational intelligence, and navigate the health challenges visit https://info.securityandsafetythings.com/retail-solutions.

Security & Safety Things and BOSCH
Security & Safety Things is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH and is part of Bosch’s strategic development of new digital growth markets. In the future, Security & Safety Things wants to attract further investors and accelerate the expansion of its global ecosystem through external partners.

For press enquiries:

Fabio Marti, Security and Safety Things
Mobile +49 172 2497100
Fabio.Marti@de.bosch.com

Andrea Gural, Eclipse Media Group on behalf of Security and Safety Things
Mobile +1 207 233 7507
agural@eclipsemediagroup.net

Security and Safety Things GmbH

Security and Safety Things operates an open IoT ecosystem that connects camera manufacturers, SoC providers, application developers, VMS providers, and systems integrators on an open IoT platform. Its goal is to accelerate the speed of innovation for security cameras and applications that make use of AI and computer vision. To achieve this the company offers a free and open operating system for security cameras, a development tool kit for app developers and a device management portal as well as an application store for integrators. Security and Safety Things GmbH is based in Munich, Germany and has been on the market since September 2018.

Bosch Group (Robert Bosch GmbH)

As a leading IoT company, the Bosch Group offers innovative solutions for smart homes, smart cities, connected mobility, and connected manufacturing. It uses its expertise in sensor technology, software, and services, as well as its own IoT cloud, to offer its customers connected, cross-domain solutions from a single source. The Bosch Group’s strategic objective is to deliver innovations for a connected life. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiary and regional companies in 60 countries.