Leading South African retailers are harnessing next-generation predictive analytics to transform price optimisation, demand forecasting and operations across their value chains.

This is according to Matthew Chittenden, Google Cloud growth leader at Argility Technology Group, a level-1 B-BBEE organisation and part of the Data and Technology cluster arm of global enterprise at Smollan. Argility is a Digicloud Africa Premier Partner in both Google Workspace and Google Cloud, and was the winner of the Digicloud Africa Rising Star award for 2024.

Chittenden says next-generation analytics is helping retailers thrive in the face of economic constraints and shrinking margins.

“Traditionally, retailers depended on historical data for forecasting, but this did not allow them to move and adapt fast enough. Then we moved into predictive analysis, and now we are going into what we call hyper-accurate AI predictive models,” he says. “These work on third-party data sets – or publicly available data – as well as first-party data which is unique to the business, and new AI driven predictive models bring all these retail dynamics into something far more advanced.”

Argility is enabling next-generation predictive analytics for retailers, with a particular emphasis on price optimisation, demand forecasting and customer behaviour insights.

One of its most transformative initiatives involves delivering analytics as a service using cutting-edge tools like Google Cloud’s Temporal Fusion Transformer. This ground-breaking technology allows retailers to move beyond basic forecasting towards hyper-accurate, AI-driven predictive models that factor in multiple time series, external variables and complex retail dynamics.

Precision, AI-driven models

Chittenden says retail clients who have harnessed this technology are seeing strong growth as a result. “It gives them precision, AI-driven models to gain the price optimisation advantage, optimise stock turnaround and improve store planning and promotions to increase sales,” he says.

Another critical area where predictive analytics is transforming retail is in understanding and anticipating customer behaviour to get the right product in front of the right customer, at the right time, at the right price. It also allows retailers to detect shifts in shopping patterns and customer expectations.

Chittenden adds that retailers are also looking to boost margins throughout their supply chains: “For example, Argility partners with Loop, a delivery management app, to optimise route planning and sequencing. This saves on maintenance, time and fuel costs and makes a significant difference in profit margins. We also integrate retail solutions such as advanced warehouse management systems, retail infrastructure and transaction platforms, and marketing and advertising solutions.

“We can tie that all together with Google Workspace, to enhance collaboration and the speed with which decisions are made. On top of that, retail employees don’t walk around with notebooks or laptops anymore – they use Chromebooks with Chrome Enterprise, giving them secure access to all their applications and networks at 30% of the cost of a normal laptop.

Google ecosystem drives growth

Argility, a Google Cloud Premier Partner through Digicloud Africa and positioned at the forefront of retail innovation, helps retailers and brands harness the full power of Google Cloud’s AI and analytics ecosystem. Chittenden says Argility’s analytics-as-a-service offering is built on Google because of Google’s leadership in the field of AI.

“Google’s whole strategy is around AI-first – for example, with Gemini AI baked into products like Google Workspace and Google Meet. Google is the head of the pack when it comes to deep-learning algorithms and modelling. We always say, choose the right cloud for the right business case or for the right fit, and Google, unanimously, is the right cloud for data and AI,” he says.

“Google is robust and secure from end to end, and when you look at the Google stack, Google owns everything from the networking or computer components, all the way up to the top. Google’s global network is the biggest in the world, and it build its own custom chips – such as its tensor processing units, AI accelerators optimised for machine learning workloads.”

Another Google advantage is its local data centre, Chittenden says. “Google sees Africa as a growth opportunity, so it has invested in an official Google Cloud region for Africa. For retailers, having a data centre within the borders of the country supports data sovereignty and compliance, and also impacts caching and speed.”

Chittenden says local retailers are increasingly seeing the value of Google solutions for transforming their business. “There are big brands moving to harness different components of our portfolio, based on what their requirements or current investments are, but we are seeing growing uptake as AI-enabled analytics becomes the big business differentiator in retail.