FIRST LOOK: How 2 Grocery Tech Companies Are Syncing Personalized Promotions and On-Shelf Availability
While a lot of industry players talk about end-to-end solutions, two companies are making strides in tightening up those capabilities on the front, back and middle parts of operations.
This week, tech company Inmar Intelligence and intelligent retail operations platform provider Upshop announced a strategic partnership designed to bring together both organizations’ solutions. The new initiative is aimed at better connecting marketing and advertising with onsite product management.
As part of the partnership, Inmar’s shopper-facing platforms, including e-commerce, retail media, promotions and loyalty, are now integrated with Upshop’s back-of-house capabilities in inventory, order fulfillment, made-to-order and fresh item management. Among other benefits, the combined capabilities will help retailers gain integrated promotion optimization, boost shopper engagement through improved personalization, deliver a closed-loop feedback system for enhanced decision making and speed coordinated campaigns.
[RELATED: Upshop Helps End the Fragmentation of Grocery Replenishment]
Such seamless integration has long been a “holy grail,” if you will, of grocery tech. “What’s unique about this is that for most retailers, they have their marketing and media teams out there doing work like incentives, retail media and communications to shoppers. Separately from that, they have inventory management systems. Those systems didn’t talk to each other,” Rob Weisberg, president, martech at Inmar, told Progressive Grocer in an exclusive first-look interview.
Such fragmentation has often led to friction. “Imagine you receive a media outreach and an offer on a special promotion and walk into your local store to discover that it’s not on the shelf due to a supply chain issue. It’s a very frustrating experience,” Weisberg said, adding that there are efficiency gaps as well for retailers and the advertiser partners. “If there is glut of product, there is an opportunity to leverage data to push out more promotional information and offers.”
The collaboration between Inmar and Upshop can help solve those common issues, the companies’ leaders report. “We have broken down silos between the system to benefit shoppers, retailers and advertisers. It impacts the entire supply chain,” Weisberg asserted.
Chris Renda, chief revenue officer for Upshop, echoed that declaration in a joint discussion with PG. “You are synchronizing everything driven on the front end with all of the things you have to do to connect inventory and the right product on the shelf,” he said. “We think of it as connecting effectiveness and efficiency. For us, it completes the cycle.”
The companies have worked together on various projects for several years, starting with e-commerce integration. “This partnership has now meaningfully expanded with this full end-to-end integration,” noted Weisberg adding, “It really is the holy grail. It’s not just what happens at digital – it’s the full circle. All of the data says that the connectivity of both those parts of the system really drive accelerated growth.”
This kind of integrated solution is beneficial for a range of retailers and their suppliers, including smaller operators. “We see it as a huge opportunity for the mid-sized and regional players,” Renda said, adding that such grocers are looking for new ways to do more with less to best connect the various facets of their businesses.
