In order to help its retail partners, Nestlé Purina PetCare has announced the implementation of a new category management system using virtual reality technology.
The pet food and supply business has teamed up with 3DVR Solutions and Blue Yonder, two suppliers of digital supply chain and fulfilment solutions (3DVRS).
According to the firm, Purina provides more than 20 pet care brands throughout the country, feeding 65 million dogs and 51 million cats each year. The business offers planograms to its retail partners, which enable the creation of shelves for better product merchandising and consumer satisfaction. Purina partnered with Blue Yonder and 3DVRS to provide a remote means for its staff to communicate with retail partners as travel was still restricted by COVID-19.
3DVRS’ Retail Visualization Suite (RVS) virtual reality headset utilises Blue Yonder’s planogram data to provide an interactive, avatar-based merchandising solution to Purina’s retail partners. Purina employees and retail partners may collaborate and communicate with one another because of the integrated system that connects them in the metaverse.
Gene Feldman, manager of training at Purina, stated that Blue Yonder’s connection with 3DVRS provides flexibility, speed, and scalability, enabling the company to operate efficiently across the organisation. Virtual reality on the desktop has smoothly transitioned to network avatars in the RVS VR Headset solution. He said that his team may now participate in meetings electronically in the metaverse and engage with new shop designs, items, and layouts to be on the leading edge of innovation.
Purina has made a number of improvements since the metaverse system was put into place, including eliminating the need for a physical store to create shelving solutions, minimising the company’s travel and environmental impact, cutting costs for training, speeding up the process of stocking a shelf, incorporating real-world factors into retail shelf planning, and forming partnerships to improve a customer’s in-store experience.
Phillip Teschemacher, corporate vice president of manufacturing for EMEA at Blue Yonder, stated that the company’s team is able to animate the planograms of Blue Yonder’s planograms in the metaverse due to its partnership with 3DVRS. It allows users to analyse, merchandise, communicate, and interact as avatars to create shelves that satisfy consumer demands. He added that Purina was among the first businesses to make use of this cutting-edge technology at its best. It is making a fantastic place to work for both its workers and retail partners by fostering an organisational culture of innovation and thought leadership.
Purina’s retail partners are now able to quickly and accurately allocate space with the assistance of the integrated solutions provided by Blue Yonder and 3DVRS. This makes it much simpler for customers to locate the items they are looking for and improves the overall quality of the shopping experience.
Nigel Hemer, the founder and CEO of 3DVRS, remarked that since Purina is always seeking out the newest technologies to give their company an advantage, they are an excellent partner for innovation.
