Aifi and Microsoft Cloud for Retail partner together to shape the future of retail

Smart shops take a birds-eye view 

Despite all the wonderful possibilities of online retail, there’s just something about shopping in-person that people around the world still love to experience. The pleasure of finding a perfectly ripe avocado or choosing a copy of your next read without a single wrinkle in the cover—all these tangible, physical experiences still drive people into physical stores to shop each week.  

But that doesn’t mean it's all wonderful. After all, who wants to wait in line when you could shop from your phone and get what you need without ever standing around in a queue? 

AiFi, a computer vision company, is bridging the gap with AI-powered solutions that optimize in-store experiences with friction-free shopping and checkout processes designed to inspire people to come back to stores they love again and again. According to Steve Carlin, the CEO of AiFi, the company “harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to address one of the major problems in the retail industry, which is that shoppers don’t like to wait in line.” AI-powered computer vision makes autonomous shopping solutions possible, helping retailers design shopping experiences that move shoppers intentionally throughout stores, ensuring that they can self-serve and even purchase items on their own, without ever waiting in line for a cashier station.  

Today, AiFi delivers the industry’s most cost-effective and flexible computer vision methods that connect retailers with loyal customers. Recently, they’ve partnered with Microsoft Cloud for Retail to make their solutions even more relevant. 

Making shopping easier with Microsoft solutions 

Computer vision is essentially the addition of AI-powered cameras to the ceilings of retail stores, which track customer behaviors during their shopping experiences. As Carlin puts it, “AiFi’s core technology is about understanding how people and objects move through space,” which lends itself to optimizing cashier and checkout solutions in-store, as well as informing product placements and shelf stocking. 

Using camera vision and artificial intelligence in this way requires lots of computing power and services, for which cloud solutions are ideal. Cloud solutions enable both geographic availability and allow for AiFi to support multiple retail verticals, from stadiums to grocery to convenience stores. They needed a robust cloud solution that would allow them to grow and scale their offerings. As a result of these needs, AiFi partnered with Microsoft, using the Cloud for Retail solution to build their platform. 

AiFi built its application on the Azure ecosystem, empowering systems all around the world due to Microsoft’s global presence. “They [also] allow us a security level that we wouldn’t be able to get otherwise,” says Carlin, complete with “a brand that’s trusted in the world,” and makes a big impact on their clients: “they know that when they work with AiFi, they get the power of Microsoft behind it.” AiFi’s application on Azure ensures things like authentication and world-class platforming that makes AiFi solutions faster and more efficient as they scale in an ever-growing marketplace. 

The future of shopping is more data-driven than ever 

Partnering with Microsoft Cloud for Retail renders camera data more accessible and actionable. Smart Store Analytics bring visibility to previously disjointed or disconnected data sets and help retailers improve in-store experience. “Aifi and Microsoft Cloud for Retail give you an e-commerce level understanding of a physical brick-and-mortar store,” says Carlin. This contextualized data allows retailers to better understand real-time consumer behavior in stores and make more intelligent decisions to improve sales and profits. In fact, this view of in-store data is similar to the deep insights previously only available to online retailers. It also helps vendor partners reimagine how their products are organized and arranged for shopping on the floor. “What’s great about Microsoft is they help take that information and visualize it so that retailers can be more efficient and vendor partners can glean key information,” says Carlin.

Its work with Microsoft has accelerated AiFi’s time to market, as well as helped them scale quickly through access to Microsoft engineering resources. The partnership has also provided a level of brand awareness and trust that would take AiFi years to generate on its own. By amplifying AiFi’s solutions through market campaigns informed by retail industry experience, Microsoft opens the door to large, existing audiences. In Carlin’s words, Microsoft acts as a kind of “force multiplier that allows us to go much further down the road much more quickly so that we can really bring computer vision to life with our retail partners.”  

Overall, the power of Microsoft solutions makes it possible for a small but growing business like AiFi to deliver meaningful results to their clients. By coupling their computer vision and AI technology with Microsoft Cloud for Retail and Azure capabilities for applications and platforms, AiFi connects with more clients in more businesses around the world. Says Carlin: “Microsoft is a great partner and is key to helping our solution work and grow. They provide engineering that allows both of us to incrementally build on the solution and make it better, day in and day out.”    

The best part of this partnership, though, is its mutuality, which enables both companies to connect with retailers and customers in brand-new ways. All of this builds market credibility and a stellar reputation with clients, leading to a bright future for AI-powered in-store shopping solutions. “Together,” Carlin says, “we provide services that neither of us could do by ourselves.”