Giant Eagle, Pittsburgh, Pa., unveiled a pilot program with Simbe Robotics, San Francisco, to deploy Tally, the autonomous shelf auditing and inventory analytics solution, in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Akron, Ohio, areas.

Tally ensures products are on shelves when and where customers expect them to be, allowing store associates to focus on customers instead of taking inventory.

In the pilot program with Giant Eagle, Tally sends detailed data reports to store teams every 30 minutes that capture, report and analyze the state and availability of merchandise. These reports help retail teams focus on out-of-stock and pricing situations while optimizing each store’s product layout.

Tally also audits shelves more frequently and significantly faster than existing processes, and with near-perfect accuracy. Tally requires no infrastructure changes to the store, and operates safely alongside shoppers and employees during normal store hours. Combined with Tally’s cloud-powered software platform and API, Giant Eagle receives information and insight into the state of its stores. This information can be used to streamline store performance, maximize customer satisfaction, increase sales and reduce operational expenditures.

"When it comes to the food retail industry, shopper experience is everything,” says Jannah Jablonowski, spokesperson for Giant Eagle. “If a product is unavailable at the time our customer wants to buy it, we’ve missed an opportunity and disappointed our customer. Tally helps us address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service and guest interaction.”

Tally will help Giant Eagle manage:

• High-accuracy inventory count of front-facing items.
• Out-of-stock and low-stock detection.
• Identification of misplaced items.
• Identification of incorrectly facing or oriented items.
• Product price tag validation.
• Third-party supplier compliance and vendor management.

“Giant Eagle is investing in cutting-edge inventory solutions to ensure the products customers want are where they expect them to be,” says Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO of Simbe. “With Tally, Giant Eagle can leverage actionable data about what’s happening on shelves. Tally’s insights add immense value to Giant Eagle customers by improving their overall in-store experience, and to store teams by empowering them with frequent, accurate inventory information.”

In its current pilot deployment, Tally robots in Giant Eagle and Market District traverse the floors multiple times per day, scanning approximately 35,000 products across the center-store grocery aisles, among others.