Retail Technology Trends After COVID 19

Systems in collapse?

The crisis has also highlighted a digital divide: some retailers were simply overwhelmed by the online demand for their services and took measures such as limiting the number of users who could log onto their sites. A more sector-wide issue was that just-in-time supply chain models broke down under exceptional demand. March was the busiest month ever recorded for British supermarkets, and hyper-optimised retailers found that their shelves were being cleared faster than they could fill them.

The outbreak was essentially a black swan event: it was an unforeseen occurrence which completely broke predictive models of normal patterns of behaviour. Nevertheless, the situation presented a lesson for many retailers: they needed to overhaul their online infrastructure – and onboard the staff needed to drive and support this – and to consider more flexible supply chain models, which could be geared up and down more quickly.

How could the future of retail look?

Of course, the situation also highlights opportunities that can cut friction in retail – such as providing signage and labelling via Augmented Reality and building social features into the shopping experience. Stores hoping to minimise overcrowding could even implement customer-counting devices and virtual queueing apps.

While this might all sound rather far-fetched, Amazon already has 26 Amazon Go grocery stores, where there are no tills or cashiers, making the process faster and cutting points of contact. After seeing rapid growth in China, the sector has been in decline in the region, however; this points to the need for the technology to be fine-tuned, which will likely see increased calls on computer vision and AI experts. In the meantime, digital and contactless payments are more attractive than ever. As Andrew Busby notes in Forbes, “Deploying the right technology in a smart way can significantly mitigate this risk and is the key to unlocking businesses as they emerge from the worst of the pandemic.”

Looking ahead, one solution for minimising points of human contact is to use autonomous technologies. In March, Starship Technologies became the UK's first commercial operator to deploy autonomous vehicles, using them to dispatch food deliveries in the company's hometown of Milton Keynes. The units are around the size of a beer cooler and can carry orders from takeaways or stores.

Pizza Hut and Domino's, meanwhile, have been working with Toyota and Ford, respectively, for some time to explore the use of self-driving cars for deliveries; and Amazon have been promoting the development of drone technology to deliver small packages for several years, with testing taking place in Cambridge. In the short term, this will see significant labour demands on AI specialists who can perfect these self-driving and autonomous delivery units; and in the future, these fleets of devices will inevitably come with considerable management and maintenance demands.