The Shelf Intelligence Imperative: Why Real-Time Visibility Can’t Wait

Retail has never lacked ambition. From same-day fulfillment to personalized promotions, the industry has invested heavily in digital transformation, reimagining how customers shop and how supply chains operate.

But as e-commerce and logistics have accelerated, the physical store has fallen behind. For many retailers, the store remains the least instrumented, understood, and optimized part of the business.

The Store Interior Is Retail’s Biggest Blind Spot

While advising large-format retailers, I’ve seen this play out repeatedly: companies build sophisticated systems around digital engagement, only to realize that what happens in-store often breaks the experience. Stockouts, pricing errors, and inconsistent merchandising undercut even the best-laid plans.

Today’s store teams are expected to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience, execute fast, and drive top-line growth. Yet they’re often doing it with manual tools, outdated information, and limited visibility into shelf conditions.

What we’re seeing now, especially among industry leaders, is a shift from reacting to store challenges to architecting around them. That starts with digitizing the shelf.

Why Shelf Intelligence, and Why Now

In-store inefficiencies cost retailers an average of 5.5% in gross sales every year. Most of these losses come from avoidable issues: empty shelves, mislabeled items, or products sitting in the backroom instead of out on the floor.

Manual processes can’t keep up. Audits aren’t frequent enough. Data is often outdated. Teams are left relying on incomplete views of what’s actually happening on the shelf.

“We saw that a good chunk of what we were finding out of stock was simply in the back room, misplaced, hadn't been worked in awhile, or it was a true on hand issue that Tally would help us identify. So we are absolutely more in stock, no doubt, for using this technology.”

Tyler King, VP FInance, SpartanNash

Meanwhile, shopper expectations are rising. Labor costs are climbing. And the margin for error is shrinking.

That’s why nearly 60% of retailers plan to invest in store automation in 2025, especially robotics. It’s not about chasing innovation for its own sake. It’s about creating the infrastructure needed to compete every day in a more complex retail environment.

From Blind Spots to Breakthroughs

In From Blind Spots to Breakthroughs: The Store Intelligence Imperative, we help retail decision-makers navigate this shift. The guide breaks down:

• The data visibility gap holding back store execution and shopper experience
• How different retail technologies stack up in terms of impact and complexity
• Why shelf intelligence delivers high ROI without requiring an infrastructure overhaulA phased roadmap from shelf visibility to AI-powered merchandising and personalization

This framework is built for operators who need results fast, and who are laying the foundation for what’s next.

At Simbe, we’ve seen retailers use shelf intelligence to create meaningful change within weeks. Our Store Intelligence™ platform—anchored by our autonomous robot, Tally—gives retailers a real-time view of product availability, pricing, and placement across every store, every day.

Retailers using Simbe are seeing:

• 98%+ on-shelf availability
• 90% pricing accuracy improvement
• Over 50 labor hours per store, per week, redirected to higher-value tasks

When shelves become truly visible in near real-time, execution improves. Labor becomes more productive. And the shopper experience improves (online and in person).

“If you can’t see it, you can’t fix it. With Simbe, we’re finally operating with real-time ground truth—and the math works.”

Bruce Hatch, CIO, Harmons Grocery

Where to Begin

You don’t have to transform everything overnight. Many of our partners start with shelf visibility in high-impact categories like center store or fresh. From there, they layer in pricing workflows, omnichannel improvements, or category-specific strategies based on company priorities.

The key is to stop guessing. When you can see what’s happening in your stores, in real time, you make better decisions everywhere else: staffing, supply chain, pricing, promotions.

Get the Full Guide