The Digital Economy Development Institute (DEDI LLC), a resident of the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT Cluster (part of the CDC Group), and Mars Kazakhstan have successfully completed a pilot project to implement the SmartLook Retail system based on artificial intelligence.

The system will allow the manufacturer to analyze the availability and placement of goods on store shelves, compliance with the standards and conditions of trading promotions. The technology used is also unique in that it does not require the use of expensive server capacities - all operations are performed on a mobile device offline.

Today it is a truly unique product, which has no analogues in the world. The fundamental difference between the software system for image recognition from photographs is that the entire process from start to finish takes place on a mobile device without access to the Internet. Previously, similar solutions necessarily involved servers with a complex of software, to which photos were sent from mobile devices and back.

Such a scheme has economic and technological drawbacks, and is also imperfect in terms of information security. By implementing SmartLook Retail, Russian developers have made a real breakthrough that can bring tangible benefits to business.

The SmartLook Retail is an intelligent image recognition system using artificial intelligence technologies based on convolutional neural networks, original algorithms, unique libraries and software components that allow realizing high-speed image recognition immediately on smartphones and tablets of sales representatives, merchandisers, mobile controllers or managers without Internet connection, which helps to solve the urgent problems of FMCG manufacturers.

SmartLook Retail:

• instantly recognizes photos with maximum accuracy without using communication channels;
• automatically fills in data on key performance indicators to assess the quality of work with retail outlets;
• eliminates the human factor, errors or data manipulation;
• promptly issues recommendations on changing the display of goods on store shelves directly on the merchandiser's mobile device;
• provides the manufacturer with the opportunity to analyze the entire market as a whole on a database recognized from photographs;
• provides reliable data to understand the effectiveness of marketing activities in stores;
• informs about the observance of the recommended retail prices by retail chains and points of sale;
• generates reports necessary for the company (compliance of prices, compliance of the realogram with the planogram, shelf share and other indicators) with absolutely reliable data.

The SmartLook implementation significantly increases the labor productivity of field employees, increases the reliability of the collected key data in retail outlets, allows you to reduce the visit time to the outlet and visit more outlets.

Mikhail Zdrok, Director of Integration and Transformation, MARS KAZAKHSTAN said, “The use of the SmartLook Retail photo recognition system developed by the DEDI LLC allowed us to receive reliable marketing indicators from the“fields”, immediately on mobile devices, in offline mode, which is a very important factor. This tool has a number of undeniable advantages. For example, the time spent by colleagues at the point of sale decreased by 25%, while the number of visits itself increased. Our company has received a very effective tool for collecting key data from the market.”

Based on the results of the pilot project, a decision was made to transfer the system to commercial operation in Mars divisions in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey. This fact proves once again that the Russian software SmartLook Retail, developed as part of the Skolkovo Technopark, is a world-class breakthrough technology.

Khuseyn Az-zari, DEDI’s General Director said, ”We have always felt that Mars management was ready to test innovations. We released the industrial version of the SmartLook Retail photo recognition system in 2019, and this project in the Republic of Kazakhstan became a challenge for us. Our software implements breakthrough ideas for using artificial intelligence technologies based on convolutional neural network algorithms. Before us, no one in the world has been able to create the entire complex of libraries and other components for a full cycle of image recognition on smartphones and tablets, the computing power of which is thousands of times less than that of servers. Our architects and developers have created new algorithms and wrote everything you need from scratch in low-level languages. This project has shown a high level of the current implementation of the SmartLook Retail, and most importantly, concrete economic efficiency for the Mars corporation.”