It’s time to meet Dott! Our new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can surface suggestions and tips to retailers based on their activity, in real-time. Sounds pretty great right?
The term ‘AI’ can seem pretty high-tech, and perhaps even a little scary – but it’s not all robots, or expensive systems that only the big stores can afford. The ability smart AI tools have to learn, grow, and give personalized assistance to users and store owners, is something that is going to transform retail in the coming years.
That’s why we’re so pleased and proud to be launching our first step into AI with Dott today. Dott is just that – a friendly dot (neither male nor female) – which aims to help retailers make better decisions about their stores and how to grow. It also means our system can learn things about retail and develop insights that haven’t been available for small to medium retail store owners.
“AI means many things to different people, from talking to Siri to autonomous cars. We wanted to simply present Vend as if you had a partner in your retail business that greeted you every day and was keeping an eye on things 24/7, making really smart suggestions on what to do next to grow,” says Vend Founder Vaughan Rowsell.
So how does Dott work? It learns about you the retailer, and your business, based on how you use the Vend Platform day to day, and by analysing sales, product, customer and inventory information in real-time. It then makes personalized suggestions on what you should do next to grow your business, literally helping you join the dots. In its first iteration, this will include surfacing ways to engage with customers and keep them coming back, and how to best report on their inventory to keep the in products in stock.
Dott will also learn industry wide trends from tens of thousands of retailers who are using the Vend platform. As it learns and develops further, Dott will be able to give you a heads up on new product trends or customer behaviour, provide regular reminders to replenish stock or fulfil an order, or analyse your sales trends and provide suggestions on promotions to run or customers to re-engage. Want to try out Vend and all our amazing features like Dott? Talk to us here.
This is part of our wider, major investment in the Vend Platform and is only the start of our push into AI. In fact, we’re also currently hiring for software engineers, product designers and product managers in our Auckland office and aim to grow our product and engineering teams by 25%! (Want to work for us? Don’t be shy, get in touch!) We want to go deeper into these new areas of AI and big data, as well as building for other best of breed platforms and new online channels for retail like Facebook and Instagram.
Dott in its first iteration is live on the Vend Platform from today – you may see it pop up with helpful suggestions depending on where you are in Vend and what you are doing so keep an eye out!
And did we mention we’re hiring?
About Kate Webby
Kate is the guardian of communications at Vend. Her love of retail began with ice cream (selling it at music festivals), jewellery (selling it in department stores), and badly made coffee (serving it in cafes). Having lived and worked for technology companies across the oceans, Kate loves sharing Vend's story and the success of its amazing customers around the world.
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