It’s becoming more prevalent throughout all retailing, especially in the building sector as Ace rolls out its new program.
Using artificial intelligence technology is no longer something that will happen in the future, just a theoretical concept. Companies, including many in the retail sector, are employing AI systems to help run their businesses and interact with customers. Ace is now the latest, launching its internally developed system last month.
“We decided it would be best for a multitude of reasons to build it internally and go at our own pace and build and scale this further in the future, and take more control over it,” said Andy Enright, senior vice president of retail strategy and operations at Ace Hardware, in a recent interview.
“If we can help our on-the-floor, in-store associates get answers to customers quicker — higher-quality, faster answers — that’ll increase our helpfulness,” Enright said. “Hopefully [associates] are more confident to go help customers with whatever oddball questions may be thrown their way from customers in the store.”
The new system is called “Hey ARMA,” referring to its Ace Retailer Mobile Assistant platform used in stores and provides product information, project advice and recommendations and can compare different products or help customers with products they may have purchased elsewhere. It was rolled out to 2,300 of the 5,200 stores that are part of the Ace cooperative.
Enright said in the interview that Ace is also working on AI initiatives around inventory management as well as making operational best practices accessible through Hey ARMA. It also plans to launch a new retail analytics platform this summer and implement AI components into that.
The need for buy-in from local stores is why the company worked closely with them while building the tool, Enright said. He noted that originally Hey ARMA didn’t have promotions, but the development team quickly found out in stores that customers would ask a lot of questions about what products were on sale. Now that’s part of the technology, a useful element when the typical Ace store has 20,000 to 25,000 individual products.
