Category Range Reviews

Business Challenge

Performing category range reviews is both time consuming and labour intensive, generally requiring a physical mock-up of the planogram. Reviews are typically based on a single size planogram, done once or twice a year with not all categories reviewed. In a rapidly changing retail landscape it is critical to have stores reflect latest consumer purchasing behaviour, right product to the right shelf.

The brief

• Be able to visualise any planogram from Space Planning in a rich 3D environment, support flat file or Category Knowledge Base (CKB) database;
• Perform planogram edits including facing count, product position with direct save back to Space Planning;
• Fast, easy to use end-to-end process must only involve a few steps to complete;
• Leverage the existing image library – build products direct from the product library. No duplicated library;
• Incorporate macro planning - load departments and aisles from Floor Planning;
• Overlay with key data – combine planogram visuals with tables, graphs and heat-maps.

The solution

3DVR’s Retail Visualisation Suite (RVS), when combined with Blue Yonder’s Category Management Suite, enables real-time 3D planogram generation incorporating key planogram data. Planograms can be loaded and visualised in context of a 3D store in seconds, or a collective of planograms loaded direct from a floorplan. Planograms can be edited within RVS with a direct save back to the planogram source, be that flat file psa or to the CKB database. Business managers can review planogram layouts and adjacencies, all combined with valuable data analytics to ensure informed decisions are made. To enhance the overall realism, RVS includes point of sale, promotional and marketing communications.

Benefits

• Perform more range reviews across more categories;
• Be dynamic and responsive to market change;
• Review cluster or store specific planograms – right product to the right shelf;
• Plan space precisely with integrated KPI’s;
• Stores designed based on the Shoppers viewpoint;
• Include POS, store communications for overall store look and feel.

Commercial Return

• Increase planogram performance and revenue;
• Save time and labour;
• No need for physical product, remove costs from supply chain;
• Reduced physical space & maintenance costs.

Data Consolidation

Solution Summary

Having the ability to visualise increases an organisations proficiency to make informed and accurate business decisions. Current disparate systems and processes sees business units working in silos, with physical store openings being the only point of collaboration, resulting in potential costly re-work and delays. With ever-changing consumer behavior and changes to the competitive landscape it is becoming all the more critical to get stores designed to meet shopper needs, the right product on the right shelf at the right price. 3DVRS’ Retail Visualisation Suite (RVS) consolidates data from industry standard platforms such as Blue Yonder’s Space Planning, Floor Planning and Autodesk ® Revit ® and AutoCAD ®, enabling Store Design, Innovation, Marketing, Macro and Micro Category Management to align on key business strategies and designs within a rich 3D store. The intuitive design of the RVS user interface enables users to navigate smoothly throughout the store, providing maximum engagement and comprehension, allowing the viewer to clearly visualise through the eyes of the shopper, leading to higher levels of collaboration and accuracy.

Features

• Incorporate new to world innovations and concepts;
• Visualise stores as they will be built, including signage and product;
• Stores built and viewed in minutes, not days/weeks/months;
• Strategic discussions incorporating store designs and in-store communication.

• Integrated with Blue Yonder Category Management Suite;
• Improved Range Review Process, delivers flexibility at speed with reduced costs;
• Plan space precisely with integrated KPI’s;
• Incorporate visual merchandising with planograms, adjacencies.

• Creating designs which stand out in the ‘real’ aisle;
• Insights and in-store solutions that drive sales growth;
• Design and view campaigns and promotions including digital.

Benefits

• Stores designed based on the Shoppers viewpoint;
• Increase internal awareness and comprehension through rich 3D visualisation;
• Broadens the conversation beyond products and brands - move from the shelf into category or department and store, facilitates a cross functional platform to test, design and review;
• Promotes collaboration  and co-creation, allowing in-store activation to be agreed quickly and effective execution planned;
• Reduces manual work processes, fully automated data flow between disparate systems;
• Reduce risk and re-work, fail cheaply;
• Communication to store for right-first-time implementation.

Store signage & communications

Business Challenge

Telco Retailer updates store signage and communications across a 400+ store network on a monthly basis. Getting the overall design look and feel correct is critical. Hundreds of designs are reviewed, improved and ultimately approved in order to keep the business aligned with the consumer. Retail Visualisation Suite (RVS) provides a medium for signage and digital/movies to be reviewed in a realistic and meaningful way. RVS removes the need for physical signage to be printed, reducing costs and increasing speed to Yes. Executive sign off no longer requires the physical dressing up of a store with proposed artwork. Approved campaigns can be communicated to store to help improve compliance. Visualising signage with adjacencies prior to print reduces costs and improves the overall look and feel of the store.

Features

• Signage updated quickly and easily by the user;
• Supports digital (video);
• Entire store can be modified in real-time;
• Interactive and intuitive user experience.

Benefits

• Designs signed off without need to print, reduces costs and increases speed to market;
• Communicate to store via 3D render to increase compliance;
• Removes need for physical store dress up.

Stakeholder Communication

Business Challenge

Large mining and infrastructure company required a centralised solution to consolidate and summarise their investments in business and the community. The key drivers were to provide transparency on their commercial activities as well as providing an educational tool for their employees. The Virtual Field Explorer (VFE) is a Google ® map based solution, allowing the user to drill down into the location of the facility to reveal visual details such as photos, 360° degree interactive/immersive panoramas , videos and brief but important/useful text facts. VFE is deployed on large format LCD/touchscreens and tablets. VFE provides a platform for investor briefings, the general community who wish to know what is happening in their area, as well as employee training to prepare for remote site visits. VFE helps the business to create awareness both internally and externally, importantly the high levels of transparency has helped to build trust in the brand. Employees are provided with valuable knowledge on operations in a highly visual and receptive way.

Features

• Intuitive and engaging user experience;
• Summarises key corporate activities in a central location;
• Includes text, images and 360° panoramas. Option for interactive 3D models.

Benefits

• Drives awareness to all stakeholders;
• Provides transparency to the community;
• Educates employees on remote facilities.

CAD Conversion

Business Challenge

A joint Blue Yonder and 3DVR Customer has invested in Blue Yonder’s Category Management Suite, including Space Planning, Floor Planning and CKB. Our client is the CIO of an international grocery retailer and the IT project delivery team needed a way to convert their AutoCAD plans into Blue Yonder floorplans. The store plans are developed by their architectural team in AutoCAD. These drawings define fixture positions, doors, access areas and columns in great detail. The Floor Planning tool needs this information and with several hundred stores to incorporate this would have required several thousand man hours to complete manually.

Solution

3DVR Solutions developed a world first AutoCAD ® Floor Planning Convertor (AFP). AFP automates the conversion of native CAD data into Blue Yonder floorplans as flat file (.pfa) or direct to Blue Yonder’s Category Knowledge Base (CKB) database which is the central repository for floorplans and planograms.

Conversion highlights

• Batch processes can convert one or multiple DWG files into floorplans;
• Hides layers not required from the CAD DWG file, generates new floorplan with trace file embedded;
• Converts Blocks from CAD into Fixtures in Floor Planning – includes ability to add merchandising rules, new fixture name and data attributes, trimming and splitting of fixture to reflect merchandisable space;
• Generates departments if created in CAD file, assigns fixtures to departments on floorplan (includes composite floorplan generation);
• Includes 2-way export from Floor Planning back to CAD to see changes made against the original CAD file;
• Provides a platform for floorplan to be converted into 3DVR’s Retail Visualisation Suite.

Outcome

AFP cleanses and converts CAD plans to floorplans within minutes. Hundreds of plans can be batched and generated within hours. Floorplans are then available for the user to add planograms to complete. The conversion has saved hundreds of hours in labour and reduced the time lag to have floor planning operational. The floorplans are more accurate as human error is removed.

Return on Investment

• Saves labour, increases accuracy of floorplans;
• Users can recognise investment in the Blue Yonder suite sooner;
• 2-way export provides the CAD store design team with the ability to review changes against original plans and make modifications prior to construction;
• Reduces construction variations which can be costly;
• Stores open on budget and on time.

Architecture Conversion

Business challenge

A joint Blue Yonder and 3DVR Customer has invested in Blue Yonder’s Category Management Suite, including Space Planning, Floor Planning and CKB. Our client is the CIO of an international grocery retailer and the IT project delivery team needed a way to convert their Revit stores into Blue Yonder floorplans. The store plans are developed by their architectural team in Revit. These drawings define fixture positions, doors, access areas and columns in great detail. The Floor Planning tool needs this information and with thousands of stores to incorporate this would have required several thousand man hours to complete manually.

Solution

The Revit Floor Planning Convertor (RFP) is the world’s first solution for converting Autodesk Revit ® projects directly to Blue Yonder Floor Planning ® floorplans. RFP is a Revit add-in that automates the refinement and conversion of Revit files (.rvt) into floorplans within minutes, as either flat file (.pfa) or direct to the Blue Yonder Category Knowledge Base (CKB) database. Hundreds of Revit projects can be batched and converted within hours. Floorplans are then available to add planograms for completing the floor planning process.

Sophisticated conversion into floorplans

A configurable spreadsheet controls how Revit families are processed and converted into the floorplan as departments, fixtures, or obstructions (non-merchandisable fixtures). Conversion settings specify how fixture families are converted into fixtures, with options to split larger families horizontally or vertically to create multiple fixtures. Adjacent fixtures have their merchandising space combined automatically to enable planogram placement.

Revit family types for walls and columns are automatically converted to the equivalent object in the floorplan, with columns being either rectangular or circular to match the Revit object type. A multi-level Revit model is converted into separate floorplans for each level, based on your specification of which levels to convert or ignore. If the Revit model has rooms or areas representing departments, they are automatically converted into department objects in the floorplan. The fixtures are automatically associated with their department to support Floor Planning’s "Attach to Department" feature, providing automatic organizing of fixture and planogram data by department. You have the option to create separate floorplans by department, creating a multi-floorplan project that is compatible with Floor Planning’s "Composite View" feature. If your Revit project has defined phases (for example existing, refurbished, or new), you can specify which phase to convert and which to ignore.

To complement all this, the conversion also creates a DXF file from the Revit model, automatically embedding the DXF content into the floorplan as a Trace File. The automatically aligned Trace File validates the placement of the converted fixtures and departments from the Revit model, and enables the option to print details contained in the Trace File overlaid with the floorplan. RFP can be used in conjunction with the Revit File Updater when data cleansing of non-standard Revit files is required.

Conversion highlights

• Batch processes can convert one or multiple Revit files into floorplans;
• Converts Revit family pivot points to reflect those in the floorplan (front bottom left);
• Offsets Revit origin to reflect Floor Planning’s 0,0;
• Optional Revit File Updater (RFU) to data cleanse Revit files not built to latest standard. Includes upgrading of Revit file to latest version;
• Provides a platform for floorplan to be converted into 3DVR’s Retail Visualisation Suite.

Outcome

RFP converts Revit plans to Blue Yonder floorplans within minutes. Hundreds of plans can be batched and generated within hours. Floorplans are then available for the user to add planograms to complete. The conversion has saved thousands of hours in labour and reduced the time lag to have floor planning operational. The floorplans are more accurate as human error is removed.

Benefits

Achieve a return on your investment in Revit and Floor Planning by saving labour and increasing the accuracy of your floorplans using automated conversions that eliminate manual effort. Be up and running with Blue Yonder Floor Planning sooner, driving a faster return from the Blue Yonder Category Management Suite.

Supplier Presentations

Business Challenge

Supplier looking to engage with retailer to present new planogram layouts and product range.

Solution

In aisle conversations an initial step towards higher levels of supplier/retailer collaboration, expand beyond category into store. New to world products and planograms visualised in aisle in store using virtual reality, comparing current versus proposed. Planograms can be edited in real-time with direct save back to Space Planning, making collaboration sessions more effective and increasing speed to market.

Features

• Photorealistic store;
• Real-time navigation, interaction and editing using RVS;
• Planograms built directly from Space Planning.

Benefits

• Speed to change - planograms edited on the fly with the retailer, sign-off discussions can begin straight away;
• Immersive - 3D stores help to gain retailer comprehension and buy in;
• Cost effective - no need to build to visualise, no store interruption.

Retailer-supplier relations

Business Challenge

Supplier looking to increase retailer/supplier relations to help drive retail sales through new department designs and layouts.

Solution

Virtual reality used as the medium for visualising and validating concepts and ideas, VR is both realistic and cost effective. New designs are quickly and easily modified in real-time, reducing costs and increasing speed to market. Virtual reality helps to drive retailer engagement leading to acceptance and buy in.

Features

• Photorealistic store;
• Concepts inserted as 3D models in situ;
• Edit and modify in real-time using RVS.

Benefits

• Designs modified in real-time, increases speed to yes;
• Enhanced visualisation reduces risk prior to construction;
• Inexpensive as nothing physical needs to be built.

Local Business Engagement

Business Challenge

Community football club requires local business engagement to help drive valuable sponsorship dollars required to fund infrastructure growth for player development. Engaging with prospective sponsors to gain their buy-in is critical.

Solution

To drive higher levels of engagement, a virtual 3D club and grounds were created to help prospective sponsors visualise improvement plans and how their brand would “appear” in the final design. Representing businesses logos in the pitch document professionalised the sponsorship toolkit to helped drive sponsor engagement.

Features

• Signage updated to reflect the sponsor being presented to;
• Conceptual infrastructure visualised in situ;
• Flexible and easy to modify;
• Real-time interaction using RVS.

Benefits

• Powerful & engaging presentation medium;
• Reflects professionalism in and around the club.