This article is brought to you by Modisoft.

AI is rapidly evolving and getting smarter every day—there are myriad use cases for retailers looking to implement it into their business, from inventory management to pricing strategy to ways to retain employees. But there are common themes regardless of what a retailer chooses to implement—AI can save time, create efficiency and make people’s jobs easier, said Safi Modi, head of growth at Modisoft. By using AI to reduce manual, time-consuming and mundane tasks that are part of day-to-day operations, employees get time back in their day to focus their attention on other parts of the business, as well as overall strategy and growth.

“This is especially critical in a retail environment where labor is a challenge and turnover is high. Anything you can do to make employees’ jobs easier and faster will make them more engaged and be a benefit to both parties. And it’ll give them back time to focus on more human-centric part of the job and help grow the business,” said Modi.

One of the most time-consuming tasks retailers have is entering purchase invoices from vendors, said Modi. Plus, like any task, there is room for human error. Modi said the company saw that this was a huge pain point for operators and was a manual process that would benefit them to be automated. The company built an AI invoice reader that automatically reads invoices, captures and processes the necessary data, and then auto populates the information from the invoice into the retailers’ back-office systems, including inventory. “This can save retailers hundreds of hours, because it does it quickly and accurately, streamlining huge portions of that workflow,” he said.

And having accurate, up-to-date inventory information can help retailers refine their ordering to be more accurate and predictable, he added, allowing operators to focus more on running their business and developing growth strategy and less on chasing down data.

“We are investing heavily in designing AI tools that help retailers create efficiency, that are easy to use for everyone in the company, even non-tech savvy employees, and that integrate easily into existing systems retailers are already using, like our Modisoft Insights software. Companies today have to differentiate themselves in a competitive retail landscape. AI can seem really daunting, but a tool like this is a great entry point into using AI.”

Learn more about AI offerings from Modisoft at Booth S4172 at the NACS Show. This is the second article in a series on Modisoft. Read part one here.