On December 22, 2022, Pensa Systems, a frontrunner in the field of automated retail shelf intelligence, announced the debut of its facings optimization solution, which will assist consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands in increasing their revenue through enhanced retail shelf facings optimization.
The term "shelf facings" refers to the number of a product's units that are visible from the front of a retail shelf. In grocery retail, the rivalry among CPG brands for facings is severe due to their direct correlation to revenue expansion.
In the past, facings allocation was established based on rough approximations of relative sales volume and velocity generated from point-of-sale (POS) data that looked backward. Brands often combine POS data with simulated shelf scenarios to estimate how well their products will do on the shelf.
However, POS data is notoriously "noisy." For instance, slow product sales represented in POS data could be an indication that a particular product is not selling or that the product is frequently out of stock and unavailable for purchase.
Pensa bridges this gap for CPG brands and retailers by offering a continuous view of real products on retail shelves across a wide variety of shops and shelf formats. Pensa applies the concept of pricing elasticity to facings by correlating actual on-shelf product availability with the number of facings per product to determine the ideal number of facings by product and by category to boost revenue without allocating space to one product at the expense of others.
Pensa's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the world's first fully automated shelf intelligence system. The company's AI solution learns to visually recognize and differentiate between products on the shelf, much like a human does. This is better than comparing a single product image against a product image database or scanning the barcode on the bottom of a package.
About Pensa
Pensa is the market leader in automated retail shelf intelligence, powered by patented powerful AI and computer vision. Pensa provides the source of truth regarding what is happening on the retail shelf in order to prevent stockouts, boost shelf share, optimize product planning, and enhance the customer experience in an omnichannel world. Pensa partners with top CPG brands and retailers internationally, including General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and Circle K, to address a trillion-dollar industry "blind spot" at a crucial time.