For many retailers, in-store success hinges on the efficiency of checkout systems — both self-checkout and the traditional POS. Merchants can prevent unsavory customer relationship issues by having visibility into potential system problems ahead of time.
NCR Predictive Services is a managed service offering for assisted and self-service technologies. The solution is aimed at predicting failures before they happen, to help retailers enhance preventative measures and speed issue resolution. Already available for self-checkout devices, in January 2012 NCR expanded the capabilities of its Predictive Services to the NCR RealPOS™point-of-sale (POS) terminals.
The new system has been deployed in the UK at Sainsbury’s and at a to-be-named major U.S. grocer, according to yahoo.finance.com. The Sainsbury’s deployment is part of a multi-million dollar managed services renewal that also will include an extension of NCR services across help desks in 1,000 stores and 23 depots.
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Ensuring that more devices are working at peak times will help Sainsbury’s save tens of thousands of hours in downtime to improve the customer’s in-store experience, the company reported in a press statement. “Consolidating our managed services enables us to use NCR’s technology to meet our commitment to deliver a great shopping experience for Sainsbury’s customers, while driving greater efficiencies that support our growth plans,” said Rob Fraser, Sainsbury’s IT Director. “Sainsbury’s and NCR share a relentless focus on ensuring shoppers at our stores can get through the checkouts as quickly as possible, especially during peak times.
NCR Predictive Services works through a software agent on the NCR self-checkout or POS device, which gathers a variety of operational data. The data is analyzed by business intelligence software and processes that leverage the NCR Services data warehouse. The warehouse maintains operational data from more than 2 million consumer points of service and 12 million annual service actions around the world, NCR reported
Based on the analysis, recommendations are made for preventive action due to end-of-life or imminent failure of devices and modules. Detailed, advance information on repairs also can be provided, enabling faster resolution, either by on-site technicians or remotely.
For example, the NCR software could identify that a cooling fan in a POS terminal is running too slowly. The software also would identify that terminals with this operating condition statistically fail within a certain time period. An NCR Customer Engineer would be dispatched automatically to change the part at a minimally disruptive time, before the defect causes failure.
