Acosta, an Acosta Group agency and a leader in providing commerce-centric solutions for the modern marketplace to brands, retailers and foodservice providers, and Pensa Systems, a leader in digital retail shelf inventory management solutions, have partnered to drive revenue growth for CPG brands and retailers with highly accurate retail shelf visibility, strategic business insights and in-store execution.
This new partnership brings together Acosta’s business intelligence, analytics, in-store data collection and merchandising solutions across the retail landscape and the proven best-in-class shelf intelligence of Pensa.
“We are excited to collaborate with Pensa to deliver the source of truth for what’s happening on the retail shelf through computer vision and advanced AI,” said John Carroll, President of Digital Commerce and Advanced Analytics, Acosta Group. “Our combined capabilities and solutions will accelerate sales and trade, optimize retail operations and further drive category ROI at the shelf for our clients and customers.”
Breakthrough Shelf Intelligence for Retailers and Brands
Pensa provides CPG retailers and brands a highly accurate view of shelf inventory through continuous, automated monitoring of actual shelf conditions. Employing patented motion-based computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Pensa’s solution captures and then analyzes hundreds of images of each individual product on the shelf, creating a 3D digital reconstruction of shelf inventory conditions with a 98% accuracy rate – far greater accuracy than delivered from other solution providers, including legacy AI. The end-to-end capture to insight process requires no new hardware, no planograms, and no reference images from the manufacturer or related upkeep of a reference library. A total picture of actual shelf inventory conditions is created with all competitor and private label products on an entire shelf captured.
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In partnership with Acosta, Pensa informs a variety of key performance indicators, including on-shelf availability (OSA), space optimization, shelf compliance and promotional effectiveness, showing changes that lead to better revenue lift. The ease and speed of the process – an entire aisle can be captured by any hand-held device in less than 17 seconds – allows for learnings to be applied more quickly and more accurately than traditional practices of using point of sale (POS) data, sometimes together with back-room inventory data. These new, nearly real-time shelf insights provide exciting benefits to brands and retailers.
Acosta’s Dedicated Solution
The Pensa partnership further strengthens Acosta’s dedicated solution for winning at the shelf. Pensa’s support on out-of-stock reduction translates directly to increased sales. Acosta lends expert business intelligence to review and analyze shelf performance, creating tools such as alerts to mitigate out of stocks, methods to optimize replenishment processes, optimal pricing strategies based on elasticity and profitability, measurement of brand performance vs. category and competitors, and measurement and optimization of the impact of category resets. Earning or maintaining category captainship is a key component to driving category ROI.
This integrated approach to success at the shelf reflects Acosta’s differentiated commitment to a cohesive offering of modern, diverse services and solutions to help brands and retailers achieve their full potential.
“In partnering with Acosta, we bolster the delivery of new data and insights to clients and customers with our ability to touch any store and any category at any time,” said Richard Schwartz, President and CEO of Pensa Systems. “We know that Acosta holds an exceptional reputation as a trusted partner to CPG brands and retailers, and we’re honored to build upon that trust by delivering transformative value through transformative innovation.”