IBA Group Engaged in a Panel Discussion on Retail Automation in Croatia

March 1, 2023 

IBA Group representatives spoke at a panel discussion on retail automation at Business Club 5. The mission of the club is to share best practices, establish business relations between participants and promote the development of their business. The event took place in Zagreb, Croatia. It was attended by companies that are engaged in retail automation.

As part of the panel discussion, Business Development Manager Aleksei Sutko addressed the meeting. He spoke about IBA Group’s expertise in FMCG and retail, and also presented the Goods Checker product. Following the speech, the participants highly rated the product and acknowledged the relevance of its intended purpose.

Panel Discussion on Retail Automation in Croatia

As part of my speech, I particularly focused on problematic issues in the merchandiser’s job. At the moment, managers do not have the opportunity to view all the information on the audit of shelves, which is sent by employees from stores. Thus, the real-time picture of the shelf remains unknown. This is exactly the problem that Goods Checker solves: it recognizes all SKUs on the shelf and instantly sends reports to the manager.

It is worth noting that speakers with experience in IT development were enthusiastic about training neural networks for Goods Checker: we use only one render to recognize SKUs. So we agreed to continue communicating on this matter with some participants of the panel discussion outside the conference.

All discussion colleagues had experience in FMCG and retail and rated our product as indispensable for the market. Participants once again acknowledged the problem with raw photo arrays that come from retail outlets. During the networking, a number of participants agreed to continue communication to share experience.

I evaluate the event positively. Such business events are a good opportunity to bring together people who are interested in IT solutions for FMCG and retail in one place. Due to the presence of the target audience of the product, we managed to achieve two goals at once: to talk with industry professionals and increase the visibility of Goods Checker and IBA Group in the Croatian market.

Aliaksei SutskoGoods Checker Product Development Manager

The panel discussion was attended by representatives of different industries, but everyone was united by a common theme – retail automation. Participants have significant experience in various areas of retail.

We discussed the problems that our Goods Checker product addresses and heard from other participants that such problems do exist in the industry. Companies are trying to solve them in various ways, and our experience caught the interest of many.

The technology for recognizing goods from photos taken at the store is understandable to manufacturers and retailers. Companies see the benefits of using it. The panelists agreed that one of the important issues in this process is to obtain a large amount of data that would be reliable. Goods Checker can become the source of such data with artificial intelligence. This data will be useful both on its own and for integration into related information systems of the retailer.

We agreed with other participants to look for joint projects in which we can bring the maximum benefit to a potential client using a combination of several tools.

Dmitry AhremchikGoods Checker Product Manager