TRUNO Conference Highlights: Data Rules the Grocery Store

Last month we held our fifth annual TRUNO Client Conference in Frisco, Texas, just north of Dallas. With record turnout from partners and customers alike, the event was our best yet! The conference is always a great time to build relationships, share and receive insight from others in the industry and discuss key trends in retail technology solutions.

The most talked about trend at this year’s conference? Data—both how to capture data and how to get the most out of the data you have.

Our CEO, Brad Ralston, kicked off the event with the keynote address, in which he discussed the importance of data in making decisions about store operations and how data will drive the very future of retail technology. From there, the topic of data was a key theme in almost every breakout session.

How our partners are using data.

Made4Net, whose warehouse management software integrates with TRUNO’s margin management solutions, discussed how data can—and should—be leveraged within the supply chain. Made4Net develops technology that can find efficiencies in routing and transportation logistics. Their operational dashboards provide operators, supervisors and management with insights into hourly productivity rates within the warehouse. The dashboards also display warehouse space availability, allowing warehouse managers to make informed decisions about where and when to accept new deliveries.

Once items have made it from the warehouse to the store, the focus shifts to moving items off the shelves. For grocers this means managing short-shelf-life products, like meat and produce. Invatron, a provider of fresh-item management software, demonstrated how seasonal trends, changes in consumer tastes and shifts in weather all create volatile patterns in fresh-item sales. Retailers can use data based on these trends to reduce shrinkage by avoiding the overstock of particular items. Grocers can also use data to implement dynamic mark downs, encouraging the sale of products while getting the most value out of their inventory.

eCommerce and digital loyalty programs, such as those offered by Swiftshopper and Como, offer insight and data on the habits and preferences of your customers. For example, Swiftshopper explained how its product affinity modeling uses a variety of factors to make personalized recommendations to customers. Retailers can use this information to improve the customers experience and increase sales.

How TRUNO is leveraging data.

TruCommerce, TRUNO’s eCommerce integration offering, ties together the eCommerce and loyalty systems to point of sale and back office systems—consolidating your data in a single location.

TRUNO’s Chief Product Officer Anthony Presley gave conference attendees a sneak peek of the company’s Business Intelligence (BI) offering—slated to come to market later this year. Driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence, this tool will help grocers get the most out of their data. From item management and staffing to basket analysis and transaction logs, TRUNO BI offers the insights you need to make data-driven decisions that will positively impact your business.

Anthony also described how the BI solution integrates with TRUNO TimeForge to provide vital information about one of your most important assets: your employees. With TimeForge, you can import historical data and monitor sales data, as well as compare scheduling information with actual attendance. This allows you to be more deliberate with how you build staff schedules. You can also collect sales data by department to ensure each section of your store is adequately staffed at all times.

In addition, Anthony showed how TimeForge’s sales forecasting feature can predict sales for any given hour with 98.73% accuracy—and automatically generate a staffing schedule based on those metrics. Now that’s leveraging your data! Even the most seasoned store manager would have a hard time achieving the scheduling precision possible through TimeForge.

In summary, this year’s TRUNO Client Conference demonstrated the ever-increasing importance of leveraging data to make truly informed business decisions. With so many technologies in the store generating and capturing data, a partner like TRUNO can provide the data insights you need to get the full picture.

Ready to turn insight into action? TRUNO can help.

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