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 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," John Carroll, president of digital commerce and advanced analytics, Acosta Group, said in the announcement. "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."
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, according to the announcment. 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.
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 quickly and accurately.
"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," Richard Schwartz, president and CEO of Pensa Systems, added in the announcement. "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."
