Digital twin technology has been in place in the retail industry for years, but many CPG and retail brands are just beginning to realize its true potential, unlocking transformative capabilities to leverage data in new ways. increase.
Lowe’s is just one company that has started to take advantage of digital capabilities. Partnered with NVIDIA earlier this year Spatial data is fused with other Lowe data, such as product locations and past orders, to form a complete digital picture.
Mason Sheffield, Senior Director of Creative Technologies Lowe’s Innovation Labs, defines a digital twin as a digital representation of a physical place or system. “It’s usually associated with live data sources,” he said at a panel at his show at the National Retail Federation (NRF) trade in New York on Sunday. “This makes it a very powerful platform for simulation and process optimization in ways not previously possible.”
Accelerate research and results
Previously, brands had to spend weeks or months planning and gathering the results of various market and shopper research projects. But today, with digital twins, every store can run thousands of simulations overnight, Sheffield said. “That’s what the digital twin unlocks: fidelity to make your insights impactful.”
Additionally, Sheffield said elements were previously trapped in silos, but with this technology, seven or eight digital spatial databases can be brought together in one space. “Now he can move the store data into one unified entity.”
There are many use cases for this technology, but Lowe’s uses avatars to understand how consumers navigate their stores (and what time of day they do so). what are their accessories? What type of carts are they making? How might this change the way products are moved from place to place?
Digital twin technology is especially powerful from a supply chain perspective, according to Sasha Pilet Koff, SVP of Global Operations and Digital Supply Chain Data, Analytics and Automation at Dell Technologies.
“You can start looking at how you are distributing your product so that it is the right time and place for your customers and consumers,” she said during the session, providing real-time insight into product availability. He added that live information can shed light on operations, in particular. This is because customer preferences continue to change.
“It’s being able to really understand how supply is meeting demand and performing better in real time. Capturing and understanding digital events allows us to understand how it impacts our customers.” added Pilett Coff.
Additionally, the technology sets different tones between brands. The retailer, once considered a competitor, and his CPG share this wide range of information between partners, so everyone is in a position to better serve their customers, he said. says Pilet Koff.
test and learn
Another benefit is the ability to see how the user experience of a product works before purchasing it, said Anand Muralidaran, NVIDIA’s head of global business development for retail and CPG.
“Try before you buy is a very common concept in most industries,” Muralidaran said. “Let’s see what the UX looks like. What does the journey look like? Until now, we haven’t been able to see this in the virtual world.”
As far as implementation is concerned, Pilett Coff said companies should ask themselves what the main problem they are trying to solve is and what data they need. “Edge computing is about being able to answer these specific questions.
This article first appeared on the site of sister publication CGT.
