How many times have you visited a grocery store the day before a snowstorm or other major weather event only to find the bread and milk aisles wiped clean? What might be a disappointment for you is also a missed opportunity for grocery stores, an industry with an already razor-thin 2% margin.

Hungry for efficiencies

Inventory management, especially for perishables, is a delicate dance. Too little of it and grocers have lost a revenue opportunity every time a customer leaves empty-handed. Too much of it and grocers lose revenue again, this time from spoilage or having to slash prices to clear shelves. Spoilage is a significant problem — grocery retailers lose an astounding $70 million annually because of food simply going bad. 

Market economics further muddies the picture. A whopping 82% of grocery companies are increasing their stock of fresh foods in response to customer demand so there’s simply more perishables to manage — and therefore more at stake.

To ensure not too much capital is tied up in unsold goods, grocery stores forecast demand and supply based on a variety of conditions, including weather, time of year, and even weekly foot traffic. But as Cognizant as observed, a whole host of additional factors affecting inventory management can drain grocery store revenues.

[Download]: Real Estate Manager Goes Digital

Smart systems

One of Cognizant’s clients, a major supermarket chain, found that working with older equipment also challenged inventory management. 

Internet of Things (IoT)-embedded sensors track ambient temperature, temperature of the food, humidity and even electric current flowing into refrigerators to keep a pulse on perishables. But this leads to grocery stores drowning in data. The sensors cry wolf too often forcing the retailer to waste expensive technician time on every perceived crisis. Such waste happens because too often, sensors do not accurately reflect the whole story. 

Cognizant has shown that data alone is not enough, strategic reading of the data tea leaves also matters in increasing efficiencies. Using the IoT sensors, Cognizant helped the grocery retailer monitor inventory in real time — the pressure on sensitized shelves changes when inventory counts drop — and restock accordingly. Even better, Cognizant’s solution analyzed the data feed in real time, at the edge. Algorithms accounted for many variables including work load, cost of energy at different times of the day, whether the door was open or closed, to recommend intelligent solutions. 

Using edge data analytics and IoT sensors, grocery stores can automate many fixes, proactive reorder inventory and even automatically churn out work orders for technicians only as and when needed.

When inventory management is a delicate and challenging operation, grocery retailers need to be strategic about how they invest precious resources. IoT + edge analytics is a game-changer. It gives retailers the intelligence they need to deploy resources effectively and proactively so they can better cater to demand and cut waste. 

IoT-driven asset management and data analytics will be key to success in the grocery industry. Climate change has increased the clamor for sustainability and less food waste. The timing for smart solutions could not be better.

Read more about Cognizant’s IoT refrigeration solution here.

[Download]: Real Estate Manager Goes Digital

You don’t always need a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The general premise driving the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics to deliver intelligence is that the end actions usually have to be executed through some kind of blanket (often human) intervention. The shaky fallacy at the core of this idea is that it takes a sledgehammer to a nut in that even small adjustments to operating conditions requires a large investment of resources. Smart edge computing addresses this challenge and applies a solution that is more proportional to the size of the problem.

[Download]: Real Estate Manager Goes Digital

Whether it’s a thermostat or a light switch or a card reader, most edge devices that control today’s commercial facilities are passive and wired devices, says Datta Godbole, the chief technology officer for Honeywell Building Technologies. Smart edge computing introduces a more efficient way of corralling the power of IoT to deliver operations intelligence. Smart edge devices can act on intelligence on the frontlines and save the heavy-duty computing for the cloud.

Smart edge computing helps companies, including facility management organizations, distribute computing needs more efficiently: you execute the small changes at the edge and save the heavy lifting for the cloud. “Time critical decisions are executed quickly without going to the cloud, while cloud computing is great for analyzing long-term trends through AI algorithms,” Godbole says.

Decisions at the edge

It is this “quickly” factor, the latency that is saved, that makes smart edge computing so valuable as part of the equation IoT + smart edge computing = operations intelligence.

Imagine a commercial building packed with fire and smoke detectors. Facilities management needs to maintain and periodically inspect these devices, which involves days of intensive work. What if instead the smoke detector could signal when it’s ready for maintenance – much like your car does? “In the future, all equipment in the building will be smart and can diagnose themselves and ask for help,” Godbole says.

The IoT part of the equation comes from the many sensors measuring a variety of parameters including temperature, humidity, light, foot traffic, occupancy and more. The introduction of IoT expands the working data set so management can more finely calibrate the final experience. “If we have IoT sensors that blanket a whole building, that conduct micro-measurements of every part of the building, we get a much truer picture of what’s happening in the building and you can control air conditioning or heating accordingly,” Godbole says.

Case Study: Advancing Smart Manufacturing Operations Value with Industry 4.0 Platform

In a sense, IoT allows for both personalized comfort and efficiencies at scale. When an employee swipes her card and enters her workspace, what if IoT-embedded edge devices automatically gave her what she was looking for: a slightly warmer conference room, lighting that adjusted depending on where she was working and her favorite snacks lined up in the kitchen?

Foot traffic sensors and occupancy patterns in the long term can dictate heating and cooling requirements so management can optimize these over time.

The use of IoT in conjunction with smart edge computing will lead to a more efficient allocation of computing resources and better and faster decision-making. No longer do you need a sledgehammer for every problem, a fine scalpel will work even better.

[Download]: A New Approach to PLM

This article is sponsored content produced by Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)—a data, tool, and API provider that specializes in automated threat detection, security analysis, and threat intelligence solutions for Fortune 1000 and cybersecurity companies.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) recently launched a commercial that encourages Canadians to register a “.ca” domain name instead of a “.com”. While CIRA’s campaign seems commercially sound, it has failed to meet one expectation: Doing sufficient domain name monitoring to ensure it wasn’t infringing anyone’s rights.

In fact, CIRA’s ad showed a banner with a “.com” domain name in the background — leading to a problematic situation. The registrar did not realize the domain name shown was trademarked and owned by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This incident was a terrible oversight on the domain registrar’s part, with potential legal implications for the registry.

When CIRA learned about its mistake, its representative delivered this message:

“We are really proud of, and stand behind, the ad. The reaction so far has been overwhelmingly positive. We look forward to helping as many Canadian businesses as possible get online with a .ca domain name.”

Domain names are crucial to any business with an online presence. Without a domain name, it would be impossible for an organization to send corporate emails or put up its own website. During the early days of the Internet, registering a domain name was a tedious and costly process. 

Today, however, the trouble with domain name registration lies more in that anyone can do it. Even cybercriminals can purchase and register a top-level domain (TLD) and put up malicious websites in hopes that victims would land on them and give out their personal information.

Easy-to-recall domain names related to brands have also become scarce because even individuals compete with businesses for them. Even famous brands have to deal with this challenge. 

Google, for instance, could not use alphabet.com because someone else owns it. Nissan, meanwhile, had to spend more than 20 years before it could acquire nissan.com from an individual named Uzi Nissan.

This scarcity, however, is now being alleviated by the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .bmw, .nike, and .mcdonalds along with country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) like .ca.

Despite the influx of new gTLDs and ccTLDs, however, .com domains remain the most sought after. As such, some businesses resort to convincing registrants to give up their domain names sometimes at exorbitant prices. The average price of a domain name bought from someone who already owns it is thousands of dollars. Cars.com is probably the most expensive domain to date, valued at US$872 million.

Other companies get lucky in that they find their hearts’ desires among discarded domains. In such cases, though, they should do due diligence to make sure the domains they wish to purchase were not given up for excellent reasons such as search engine results pages (SERP) and security violations. They should keep in mind that domains in Google’s blacklist, no matter how memorable, would never show up in search results because of SERP violations. Domains in security vendors’ blacklists, meanwhile, would always be blocked on computers where their solutions are installed.

To avoid ending up with domains that have a checkered past, users can use a WHOIS history checker before purchase. Such a tool would reveal everything about the domain in question. It can help future domain owners ensure that their websites do not have ties to any malicious activity, individual, or organization at any point in their life cycle.

Domain names have become more than just a means to gain online visibility. They are now unique identifiers that point to organizations’ brands. That is why it is important for all companies to make domain security a priority.

About the Author

Jonathan Zhang is the founder and CEO of Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) — a data, tool, and API provider that specializes in automated threat detection, security analysis, and threat intelligence solutions for Fortune 1000 and cybersecurity companies. TIP is part of the Whois XML API family, a trusted intelligence vendor by over 50,000 clients.