Shownotes
Grocers are investing heavily in electronic shelf labels, but what happens when the hardware is in place and the software can't keep up with the complexity of grocery pricing? In this edition of 5 Insightful Minutes, Kim Schneider, VP of Sales for Vestcom North America Retail at Avery Dennison, joins Ben Miller and Chris Walton to explain why the key to maximizing shelf-edge technology investments starts with the software behind the labels.
Kim breaks down why Vestcom's expertise goes far beyond paper shelf tags, and how its storeLink software acts as a central brain for managing the complex data, pricing rules, promotions, and operational demands of the grocery shelf edge. She explains why going digital doesn't eliminate the challenges of retail execution, especially when grocers are managing a combination of paper and electronic shelf labels, and how intelligent software can help retailers protect their ROI, avoid vendor lock-in, and maintain accurate pricing across every store.
Key Topics Covered:
• Why electronic shelf labels are only as effective as the software behind them
• How Vestcom's 40 years of shelf-edge expertise informs its technology solutions
• Why grocery pricing data is so complex
• How storeLink manages pricing, promotions, and shelf-edge data
• The operational challenges of balancing paper and digital shelf labels
• Why going digital doesn't automatically eliminate pricing and execution issues
• How software can act as a single source of truth across paper and digital labels
• Why hardware-agnostic software helps retailers avoid vendor lock-in
• How retailers can protect the ROI of their ESL investments
• The hidden operational costs of pricing errors and sync failures
• How storeLink proactively identifies data issues, layout errors, and offline tags
• Why software should never be an afterthought in an ESL rollout
• What grocery CEOs and CIOs should consider before investing in digital shelf labels
Read Kim Schneider's article: Could an ESL Blindspot Sabotage Your ROI?
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Transcripts
Foreigning us now for five insightful minutes is Kim Snyder, VP of sales for Vestcom North America Retail at Avery Denison.
Speaker A:Kim is here to share how grocers can think about maximizing their investment in shelf edge technologies.
Speaker A:Kim Investcom is well known as a pioneer of paper shelf execution.
Speaker A:Yeah, 40 odd years now.
Speaker A:But with grocers investing heavily in digital solutions for shelf labeling, frankly get us started.
Speaker A:What is vescom's role in this world?
Speaker B:Thanks Ben.
Speaker B:It's really great to be here and you bring up a really great point.
Speaker B:I think the biggest misconception is that Vescom is just a paper tag printer.
Speaker B:At our core we're really data experts at the shelf edge.
Speaker B:The magic lies in our data composition capabilities.
Speaker B:We're the engine that ingests massive amounts of data and sometimes that data is pretty messy.
Speaker B:And we seamlessly manage the high frequency and complexity of promotions, media, pricing, all the things that go along in grocery, regardless of whether that output is paper or digital.
Speaker B:Here's the reality.
Speaker B:Electronic shelf labels can be a very great tool without intelligent software behind them and is just an expensive piece of hardware.
Speaker B:Going digital doesn't magically solve the brutal complexity of pricing rules, promo stacks and SKUs.
Speaker B:In fact, if you're balancing both paper and digital, it actually doubles the complexity.
Speaker B:Vescom bridges that gap with our storelink software solution.
Speaker B:It acts as a central brain that coordinates across both paper and digital, ensuring consistency and accuracy from a single source of truth.
Speaker C:So Kim, help unpack that for me because I know Ben and I are a big proponent of electronic shelf labels.
Speaker C:They're big capital costs as well, but they, you know, they basically unlock labor savings and they ensure price compliance.
Speaker C:You know, at the end of the day that's some of their big value.
Speaker C:But so how do you embed yourselves with the major grocers then?
Speaker C:How do you really help them unlock the benefits of digital shelf label technology?
Speaker B:Digital shelf labels are such a major capital investment, the focus naturally lands on the hardware.
Speaker B:And the biggest risk we find is when hardware is installed and the systems just don't allow for the operational intricacies that exist in the retail world.
Speaker B:As you probably know, grocery data is notoriously complex.
Speaker B:What shows up on a shelf tag isn't just a static price from a database file.
Speaker B:Every tag is built on layers and layers of logic, from localized promos to item rules and batching and template selection.
Speaker B:If the back end systems aren't built to handle that level of sophistication, it orgs end up spending hundreds of hours Writing custom code just to manage complex pricing data rules, promo formats and store level exceptions.
Speaker B:In the meanwhile, Soar Associates also are wasting time manually hunting down errors on the sales floor.
Speaker B:So instead of saving labor, you end up with operational friction that erodes the ROI you promised the board.
Speaker B:That's why intelligent software management is so vital.
Speaker B:And that's where Vescom comes in.
Speaker B:We handle the heavy lifting right up front, cleaning up the data and getting it to the shelf edge in a way that the digital investment actually delivers on its promise.
Speaker A:Kim, let me just reflect this my take and tell me if I'm reading this right.
Speaker A:Your view is that once a grocer has made that investment to go digital with the shelf abeling, then you're of the belief that it's the software layer that is also crucial to unlocking the full potential from their capex.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker B:So like we said earlier, you know, hardware procurement naturally takes the spotlight because of the massive capex investment, but the software orchestration is really the hero behind the scenes that actually determines whether your rollout succeeds or falls flat.
Speaker B:And that's why we built storelink to be hardware agnostic.
Speaker B:So no matter what tag technology a grocer chooses, our role is to help them get the absolute most out of that investment.
Speaker B:So in grocery, you know, you're dealing with thousands and thousands of SKUs, ongoing price execution, complex marketing and promo offers.
Speaker B:The hardware at the end of the day simply is displaying an image.
Speaker B:It's the software engine behind the scenes that cleans up the complex data, applies the rules and the logic.
Speaker B:It, it resolves discrepancies and builds an accurate shelf visual all at the same time.
Speaker B:It also, the platform also catches the sync failures that may happen before shoppers ever see a wrong price or an associate gets pulled away to troubleshoot or fix a tag.
Speaker C:So Kim, I don't want to let you off the hook here.
Speaker C:I want to put your feet to the fire a little bit because you mentioned Solink.
Speaker C:I'm curious, like how does it actually work?
Speaker C:How does it actually work to maximize the ROI of the ESLs in a store?
Speaker B:As you said earlier, Vescom has 40 years of shelf experience and expertise.
Speaker B:And we took all of the things that we've been doing for 40 years, the complex data logic, the rules, the execution, know how all the things that We've mastered over 40 years of paper tag printing and we translated that all into the store link software engine and that's designed to protect grocers from a couple of big operational pitfalls.
Speaker B:The first being avoiding vendor lock in.
Speaker B:We separated the software from the hardware to create a completely agnostic platform.
Speaker B:So that means if a retailer acquires a new brand that's running on a different hardware, or if they decide to switch vendors down the road, they can seamlessly integrate without having to overhaul their entire data infrastructure.
Speaker B:The second is we're eliminating the hybrid friction.
Speaker B:So as we know, most stores aren't going to be 100% digital overnight.
Speaker B:Some may never be completely digital.
Speaker B:Storelink acts as a single source of truth, managing across both print and digital simultaneously.
Speaker B:The last is removing the operational blind spots that we talked about.
Speaker B:Storelink works in the background to proactively monitor both the data and the physical devices.
Speaker B:It catches sync delays, layout errors, and offline tags before shoppers ever see a wrong price.
Speaker A:On the Shelf Let me get you out of here.
Speaker A:I've got one last question.
Speaker A:If you're sitting across from a grocery CEO or a CIO who's about to implement an ESL rollout, from all of your experience, what's the one piece of advice that you'd give them?
Speaker B:So my single piece of advice is this.
Speaker B:Don't allow the software component of your project to be an afterthought.
Speaker B:It's easy to forget that labels are just at the end of the they're the display at the end of a massive data pipeline.
Speaker B:Hanging a digital tag on the on the shelf is actually the pretty easy part.
Speaker B:The real work is ensuring software can automatically stream clean data, resolve sync errors, and execute complex template variations across every store and every generation of hardware deployed.
Speaker B:If you treat software as a secondary detail, the gaps you experience will quietly erode your roi.
Speaker B:But if you get the software layer right from the beginning, your execution will scale, it will go smoothly, and your hardware investment will deliver every dollar you promise to the board.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's especially true, Kim, when you think about it like no retailer is going to go fully digital right out of the get go.
Speaker C:Like they're probably going to have some hybrid solution like you mentioned before of electric electronic shelf label and and paper shelf tag too.
Speaker C:So that's a.
Speaker C:It's a great point as you think about managing this whole complexity.
Speaker C:And to that point, you know, before we let you go, you also just recently published an article on this topic, which many of our listeners also like to read and ingest as much information as they can.
Speaker C:So what's the best way for them to find that article?
Speaker B:Thanks Chris.
Speaker B:I agree, this has been really great.
Speaker B:And if the listeners are interested in learning more.
Speaker B:They can follow Vescom on LinkedIn.
Speaker B:That's where they'll find the recent article.
Speaker B:And they can connect with me also if they'd like to talk further.
Speaker A:Okay, that's been great.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:Thank you, Ben.
Speaker B:And thank you, Chris.
Speaker C:Thanks, Kim.