KSI Vision uses security cameras to detect aspects to improve in store operations and thus achieve better commercial performance.
Original article for El País newspaper by Alejandra Pintos Anelo. https://www.elpais.com.uy/el-empresario/software-con-ia-desarrollado-en-uruguay-optimiza-las-ventas-de
Gonzalo Carozo (COO) y Rodrigo Duarte (CTO), co-founders of KSI Vision. Photo: Juan Manuel Ramos.
"We discovered that small stores were losing between US$5,000 and US$20,000 on small operational things," Gonzalo Carozo, chief operating officer (COO) and co-founder of KSI Vision, a software company that uses video analytics to optimize commercial spaces, told El Empresario. In larger chains the figure can rise to US$535,000, according to their estimates.
Those “small operational things,” for example, were employee break times, which coincided with peak traffic times in the store. The software developed by KSI is part of the new wave of products that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) for their operation.
Transform existing security cameras with artificial intelligence
Previously, traffic monitoring in stores was done exclusively through sensors, which have a high cost for the customer because they must pay for each one of them.
KSI's proposal "transforms existing security cameras with artificial intelligence to obtain people and vehicle counting analytics to increase income and the performance of physical spaces." Therefore, it is not necessary to purchase hardware, but rather you pay a monthly subscription that enables the use of the software and also offers technical support. From KSI Vision they explained that, the more square meters the company has, the more accessible the service becomes, and more easy is to implement this software with AI that optimizes the sales of big retailers.
Fitting rooms dashboard from KSI Vision.
Understanding customers
«What is the obsession of chain stores owners? Understand the clients well. Why do they buy? Why not? So, when you give them the information that there are thousands of customers who are not buying and you tell them the reasons, it is not just about improving operations. "It means designing the entire store so that this doesn't happen again," exemplified Rodrigo Duarte, co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of KSI Vision.
The company, founded in December 2019 - prior to a difficult time for physical commerce, as a result of the COVID pandemic - already has international giants in the retail sector such as Inditex (the group that owns Zara, Stradivarius and Lefties, among others) as clients, with almost 6,000 stores), Bestseller and Mango (2,300 branches), as well as renowned local spaces such as Kinko, Carrasco Airport and the Tres Cruces shopping center.
According to the entrepreneurs, reaching large companies with their service has been relatively easy because "there is a great need for a good product" like the one they offer. In the case of the Spanish companies Mango and Inditex, the agreements were closed with the headquarters, who establish the directives for their subsidiaries.
«When we started putting effort in Spain, many opportunities arose in America and Latin America as well. That tells us that the product demanded worldwide, there are retail giants here," they concluded.
Innovation as a basis. How the software with AI optimizes the sales of big retailers
KSI Vision creates a virtual copy of everything that happens in the physical store space, called a “digital twin.” Real-time data is then generated from AI video analytics, accessible over the Internet from any device. In this way, periodic alerts and reports are created to increase the conversion and efficiency of the commercial space. The software also has a chatbot called Simona that works with GPT-4 to answer questions in real time about the stores. It works with Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp and Telegram.
KSI Vision Chatbot
To develop the software, the KSI Vision team (currently made up of 12 people) received seed capital from the National Development Agency (ANDE) and an instrument from the National Research and Innovation Agency (ANII).
«Innovation was very important, because until a few years ago this could not be done in this scalable way. There was no hardware or software capacity, because it is a very heavy, very large processing, in 2018 it began to be viable,” Carozo commented.
The technology company founded in 2019 by Pablo Senatore, Justino Zavala, Gonzalo Carozo and Rodrigo Duarte, has commercial offices in Madrid and Montevideo.
If you want to know more about how you can implement digital twins in your industry to improve performance in your stores, do not hesitate to contact us at this link.