https://www.business-reporter.co.uk/retail/augmented-reality-in-retail

Amber Hovious at Teamwork Commerce explores connected retail ecosystems and explains why AR shouldn’t exist in isolation 

From virtual try-ons to interactive product displays, augmented reality (AR) is redefining how brands engage customers and drive sales. However, it is critical to understand the importance of deploying AR in the right way that provides value for both retailers and their customers. While many are jumping on the AR bandwagon, only a few retailers are utilising it effectively.

The question is: If AR is valuable, why isn’t everyone realising it?

The key lies in the appropriate use of the technology. AR is exciting, but it shouldn’t be deployed in isolation. The technology’s true potential lies in integration with other technologies, ecosystems, and real-world applications. When leveraged in tandem with other advanced technologies – such as RFID, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) – and connected with the wider retail ecosystem, AR can deliver personalised and frictionless customer experiences in real-time.

CX benefits from integrating AR

Offering immersive interactive experiences and engaging in-store experiences, AR-powered solutions are redefining the customer shopping experience (CX). From streamlining operations to tailoring customer experiences, retailers can use AR in a number of ways to reap its full value.

Real-time inventory visibility for customers. If retailers can deploy AR in their stores, they can help customers visualise available stock and even locate products. As a result, customers can easily visualise different items and locate them without a hassle.

Customers can virtually try on products, instantly know what colours and sizes are available for purchase, and even see any alternative suggestions available. This creates a frictionless and connected in-store shopping experience for customers.

Omnichannel shopping experiences. As omnichannel shopping becomes more common, leveraging AR solutions can make these experiences more seamless and user-friendly. AR allows shoppers to see products in their environment, enhancing confidence in purchase decisions. By integrating AR with order management systems, retailers can enable customers to reserve, purchase, or request home delivery directly from within the AR interface.

This removes the hassle of switching between platforms, streamlining the shopping process for a more frictionless experience. More importantly, customers often value in-store shopping experiences to see and feel items before they make a purchase. If an item a customer is looking for is out of stock, AR can fill this gap and allow them to visualise it. This allows retailers to drive sales opportunities while increasing customer satisfaction.

Personalised experiences. Retailers that personalise customer interactions within AR environments can create exceptional value and significantly enhance the shopping experience. By combining AR solutions with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, retailers can ensure customers are provided with hyper-personalised recommendations based on shopping history, preferences, and even real-time interactions with products.

This can improve sales as customers are more likely to interact and make purchases when they receive relevant and meaningful product suggestions.

How it impacts operations

Integrating AR with a wider retail ecosystem can ease the workload on staff. Instead of manually checking stock availability or searching for alternative sizes, employees can rely on AR systems that sync with the broader retail tech stack to provide instant information directly to consumers. This can allow staff to spend more time on valuable tasks such as personalising human interaction with customers and ensuring high-quality in-store experiences.

Beyond enhancing in-store experiences, AR plays a crucial role in streamlining retail operations. By integrating AR solutions with RFID and wider supply chain technologies, retailers can facilitate faster restocking, predictive demand analysis, and even automated reordering, ensuring popular AR-featured items are always available.

Retail associates can use AR-enabled smart glasses to quickly locate products, reducing picking time and errors. Similarly, staff can use AR-powered glasses to scan barcodes and QR codes, speeding up inventory management significantly.

The bottom line

Augmented Reality is a powerful tool, but its potential is limited when it exists in isolation. To reap its full potential, retailers need to integrate it with the wider retail ecosystem and use it in tandem with other technologies such as AI, RFID, and more.

The real value isn’t in using standalone AR applications, but in incorporating the technology into an all-encompassing retail technology stack to create seamless, connected experiences that merge the physical and digital worlds in meaningful ways.

Those who can approach their technology adoption holistically can create frictionless shopping experiences for their customers while streamlining their retail operations.

While tracking inventory in real-time through item-level might have been a nice to have for retailers in the past, as more brands recognize the ROI delivered by this capability – not just within the supply chain but across all retail touchpoints – it has become increasingly integral to a successful retail operation. And those missing out risk falling behind their competitors. 

Gone are the days when traditional techniques such as barcode scanning and manual inventory counts were considered enough. It is clear that, to make decisions confidently, retailers cannot rely on manual processes which are unable to deliver complete inventory visibility in real-time. At the same time, with consumer expectations for seamless omnichannel shopping experiences at an all-time high, retailers need a smarter, faster way to track inventory in real-time.

Inventory accuracy and real-time visibility can significantly impact business efficiency and profitability. According to Deloitte’s 2025 U.S. Retail Industry Outlook, retail executives are turning to automation and real-time inventory visibility. In 2025, retail leaders are looking to invest in advanced tracking systems to monitor shipments and inventory throughout channels.

The cost of reduced inventory visibility  

The cost of reduced inventory visibility extends far beyond misplaced stock—it can directly impact revenue, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency. The lack of accurate inventory visibility in real-time can lead to inefficient inventory management, resulting in stockouts and overstocking. Stockouts lead to frustrated customers leaving stores empty-handed, while overstocking turns warehouses into expensive storage units for products collecting dust. The message is clear when it comes to inventory: if retailers can’t see it, they can’t sell it. 

Inaccurate inventory data can also lead to planning difficulties and operational inefficiencies. With poor inventory visibility, staff may have to spend more time locating products instead of focusing on customer service, which not only increases labor costs but also impacts the customer shopping experience.

Similarly, poor inventory visibility also disrupts omnichannel fulfillment, leading to delays in online orders and click-and-collect services. Meanwhile, retail shrinkage and theft remain difficult to identify without precise stock tracking, further eroding profitability. Ultimately, when retailers cannot see what’s on their shelves (or what should be there), they’re essentially flying blind. Retailers must deploy item-level RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology throughout their retail ecosystem – from supply chain to physical stores. 

Item-level RFID and its benefits

Unlike traditional barcode systems that require line-of-sight scanning, RFID uses radio waves to automatically capture item data without manual scanning. Each product is tagged with a unique RFID chip, which can be read instantly, even if it’s inside a box or behind a shelf.

Item-level RFID allows retailers to track each product in real-time, providing accurate data, unmatched speed, and efficiency. As a result, retailers can understand exactly what’s in stock and where to find it—eliminating costly errors and improving overall efficiency. Replacing time-consuming manual inventory counts, item-level RFID facilitates automated processes. The Android Bluebird RFID Scanner App, in conjunction with Teamwork Commerce, streamlines the stock count process by updating inventory records in real-time. This provides businesses with up-to-date stock information for informed decision-making and ensures efficient inventory management. This allows staff to focus on what really matters—customers. 

However, RFID’s benefits go far beyond inventory counts and stocked shelves. The technology can serve as a powerful tool for brands to minimize shrinkage and theft. By deterring fraud and improving real-time tracking, item-level RFID can significantly reduce losses and help retailers improve profitability. As per Deloitte’s 2025 U.S. Retail Industry Outlook, three-quarters of responding retail executives say they’re increasing investments in retail theft prevention. As retail leaders turn to theft prevention technologies, item-level RFID should be considered as one of the key parts of the technology stack.

At the same time, retailers can leverage real-time tracking capabilities of item-level RFID to streamline order fulfillment across all shopping platforms, creating consistency. This can help shoppers better understand whether the item they are seeking is available in stock and even track their order to know when it’s available for collection. According to Deloitte, 68% of shoppers are increasingly likely to purchase products on social media. By ensuring accurate and consistent inventory updates across all shopping channels, retailers can create seamless and high-quality shopping experiences, significantly boosting customer satisfaction. 

With fewer lost sales, lower labor costs, improved customer satisfaction, and a seamless supply chain, item-level RFID technology delivers significant return on investment (ROI).

What Lies Ahead?

The future is likely to see the increased adoption of advanced RFID technology. There is significant focus being placed on deploying RFID technology across all parts of retail organisations to transform in-store experience, inventory management, stock control, personalization and more.

Retailers have already started to use the technology to tailor customer interactions. Real-time insights facilitated by item-level RFID can help retailers track customer preferences and shopping patterns, personalizing future discounts, messaging, and interactions. What’s more, smart dressing rooms are now being equipped with RFID tags on clothing items that can sync with interactive mirrors, showing style suggestions, size availability, and complementary accessories. This creates top-tier shopping experiences for customers that can result in improved consumer loyalty. 

Similarly, RFID-powered self-checkout kiosks enable customers to instantly checkout within seconds by automatically scanning items. Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-Powered Self-Checkout technology allows users to instantly scan items with RFID tags, utilize loyalty apps, apply coupons, and explore new payment methods. This enhances efficiency and convenience for both employees and customers, streamlining the shopping experience.

Final Verdict

To thrive in the market, RFID implementation has now become a must-have rather than nice to have. Retailers who leverage item-level RFID technology in tandem with wider retail solutions can meet evolving consumer needs while ensuring continued business growth. 

Looking to understand how your business can use the power of item-level RFID? Get in touch!

According to National Retail Federation (NRF), the total value of retail returns in 2024 was expected to reach $890 billion, equating to 17% of all merchandise sales in the US – an increase from 15% in 2023. The same report finds that 93% of retailers believe retail fraud and other exploitative behavior is a significant issue for their business.

The threat of returns and fraud attempts within the industry is nothing new. However, with numbers continuing to grow, retailers are understandably concerned. They must take swift action to mitigate the damage caused by both. Deploying the right technology, brands can effectively manage returns to maximize resale speed and ensure seamless experiences for both customers and in-store associates.

Managing Returns

Returns can be costly to a business and leave a huge impact. And this isn’t limited to the US. According to reports, in the UK, 11% of all returns in 2024 were from ‘serial returners’ – frequently buying and returning items – causing returns to reach a new tipping point, costing the industry £27 billion last year. A global challenge, the returns dilemma causes issues for retailers when slow reverse supply chains disrupt the operational effort behind returned items. Products often get lost or delayed, with poor visibility of stock completely disrupting the chain. The longer it takes for retailers to get products back onto the shop floor, the lower the item’s resale value. In some cases, items cannot be resold at all. Ultimately, the faster retailers can push their products through the return supply chain, the sooner they can be sold – and the better the sale price. 

Deploying RFID within stores with the correct order management systems (OMS) enables retailers to accurately track returned items. Item-level RFID provides brands with complete visibility of all products, including returned items. By reactivating tags when items are returned, retailers can accurately view products travelling through the supply chain. This visibility allows brands to see where products go missing, and where inefficiencies lie. In response, they can optimize the reverse supply to ensure items are returned to the shop floor quickly, maximizing new sales opportunities on returned products.

Taking this one step further, retailers can turn returns into additional sales opportunities, through clienteling. Teamwork Commerce’s clienteling tools, powered by Endear, utilizes data-driven CRM to offer seamless communication with clients, with the ability to provide product recommendations through customer purchase history. When customers return products in-store, retailers are presented with an additional interaction with consumers. Clienteling technology, implemented with mobile POS systems, equips retailers with useful information to turn in-store customer returns into sales opportunities off the back of creating a more personalized and enjoyable shopping experience – also strengthening customer relationships. Ultimately, retailers can benefit from not only creating efficient streamlined returns, but they can use these interactions to drive additional revenue from new sales.

Managing Fraud

Returns can feel messy and chaotic, but retailers need to remain vigilant, with the threat of returns fraud remaining a prominent issue within the industry.

When implemented with Point of Sale (POS) solutions, RFID technology can also help navigate in-store fraud attempts. Retailers who have adopted RFID into their operations will have all products marked with small, readable tags. When items are brought back for return, associates can check the tag to determine the origin of the product – where it was purchased from, and whether it has simply been lifted from a shelf without purchasing at all. The data within the tags can also show exactly when the item was purchased to ensure it was within the returns timeframe and speed up the process while detecting and mitigating any fraud attempts.

The Takeaway

To embrace 2025 in full force, it’s important that retailers take control of their returns process – and remain vigilant to fraud attempts. Implementing item-level RFID with the right CRM platform can empower brands to navigate this issue, maximizing opportunities around returns and minimizing successful fraud attempts.

To learn about how Teamwork Commerce’s solutions can help your retail brand navigate busy return periods and fraud spikes, get in touch today.

With evolving customer expectations, the rise of omnichannel shopping habits, and ongoing supply chain challenges, today’s retail landscape has become more complex than ever. To seamlessly manage their retail ecosystems, brands need to integrate their offline and online shopping platforms, gain real-time inventory visibility, and tailor customer experiences – all while controlling costs and minimizing losses. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology emerges as a transformative solution that simplifies operations by enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and security.

What is RFID? How Does it Work?

In simple terms, RFID technology uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags. An RFID system consists of a radio transmitter – a tag – a receiver, and a transponder. When triggered by an electromagnetic interrogation pulse from a nearby RFID reader device, the tag transmits digital data back to the reader, identifying its presence.

Unlike traditional barcode readers, which require line-of-sight scanning, RFID can facilitate bulk scanning and real-time inventory updates. This eliminates human errors, improves stock replenishment, and enhances supply chain efficiency by delivering unmatched accuracy and speed in real-time.

The Benefits of RFID

RFID technology delivers threefold benefits for retailers, optimizing inventory management, enhancing customer experiences and reducing retail losses:

1.) Simplifying Inventory Management

As omnichannel retail continues to grow, precise and efficient inventory management has become crucial. Traditional manual inventory processes are often slow and susceptible to errors, leading to stock discrepancies, delays, overstocks, and stockouts. These inefficiencies can harm both the customer experience and a retailer’s bottom line.

Providing real-time inventory tracking, RFID can significantly improve inventory visibility and accuracy across multiple locations such as warehouses and stores. As a result, brands can reduce stock discrepancies, conduct instant stock audits, automate replenishment, and maintain optimal inventory levels. This allows retailers to ensure relevant products remain in stock at all times without overstocking inventory.

Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-Powered Stock Counter App streamlines the stock count process, providing real-time visibility into inventory status and allowing retailers to make more informed decisions based on real-time stock information.

2.) Enhancing the Customer Experience

From streamlining operations and ensuring on-time deliveries to enhancing convenience, RFID enables brands to fulfill core customer expectations. More importantly, retailers can use this technology to address pain points and offer an exceptional shopping journey.

Long checkout lines and delays often drive customers away or push them toward online shopping. To counteract this, retailers can deploy RFID self-checkout. Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-Powered Self-Checkout solution allows customers to quickly place items in a designated area where the system immediately scans RFID tags without the need to scan each item individually. This allows customers to swiftly complete the checkout within seconds while significantly increasing the number of transactions completed during operating hours.

One of RFID’s most impactful benefits is its ability to empower staff to tailor customer experiences by using real-time, data-driven insights into customer buying patterns and shopping behaviors. This allows retailers to make relevant and tailored recommendations, guiding customers to items they’re looking for, or products that are relevant to them. At the same time, RFID also simplifies omnichannel offerings such as Buy Online, Pickup In-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup to ensure faster order fulfillment and improve convenience and customer satisfaction. Studies have also previously indicated that RFID adoption allows retailers to expand their omnichannel offerings and enhance customer satisfaction.

3.) Reducing Shrinkage and Improving Security

Retail shrink is an ongoing challenge for retailers, costing brands billions annually. Theft, misplacement, and fraud are some of the main reasons resulting in retail shrink. RFID solutions can help mitigate these losses by tracking high-value items in real-time, triggering alerts for unauthorized movement, and improving theft detection. Unlike traditional security systems, RFID tags remain active throughout the product’s lifecycle, enabling retailers to track individual items throughout the supply chain.

RFID’s Growing Prominence

The role of RFID is only going to become more critical in 2025 and beyond. The question today isn’t whether retailers are using RFID; it is to what extent they’re leveraging the potential of the technology. Those who deploy RFID-powered solutions from their supply chains to physical stores can create an integrated retail ecosystem, flowing with seamless real-time communication.

Looking to understand how your business can better leverage RFID? Get in touch.

While the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) took the world by storm in 2024, the follow-through didn’t exactly land how many might have anticipated. With so much still to learn about the technology, many brands encountered a number of challenges in executing its deployment. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the AI takeover hasn’t quite materialized yet across retail. 

However, as the industry settles into 2025 with more realistic expectations around the role that AI can play in technology implementation, the power of artificial intelligence is still clear for all to see. Its capability to help brands personalize the in-store customer experience can transform a retailer’s operations, especially with the right foundational technology already in place.

Data Data Data

AI is only as useful as the information it receives. The more accurate data fed into AI systems, the better its analytical capabilities can perform. In today’s retail environment, which is reliant on a range of technologies across the entire retail ecosystem, accurate data should not be hard to come by.

From Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) measuring inventory levels in the supply chain to Order Management Systems (OMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Point of Sale (POS) technologies tracking customer journeys, preferences and transactions, many retailers already have these solutions deployed within their operation.

With access to this data, an AI model can receive a significant amount of reliable information that can be utilized by retailers to create actionable outcomes that produce highly tailored experiences.

Creating a Personal Touch

Once the data challenge is overcome, retailers can feed as much information as necessary into an AI model that processes data and presents it back to retail associates in a digestible format.

The right model can create natural language summaries that cover a range of retail touchpoints, including current inventory levels, sales trends, and other important metrics. Importantly, these reports can be shared with staff to better inform them of evolving product trends and customer interests.

This provides shop floor staff with the ability to handle any customer enquiry, instantly. Better yet, with artificial intelligence capable of leveraging data to learn about previous trends and accurately forecast future ones, it can be used to make on-the-spot recommendations to customers based on their own personal preferences. While it might be a first-time interaction on the shop floor, the technology will make customers feel like the retailer has known them for years. They’ll feel valued, with their shopping needs met. This significantly enhances sales opportunities and encourages customer retention.

AI Will Arrive

2024 showed us that the world isn’t quite ready for AI to transform retail as we know it. However, it is ready to assist with small integrations that assist retailers in daily tasks – such as managing inventory or personalizing in-store experiences.

As we learn more about the technology, these integrations will be bigger, faster and even more accurate. But for now, AI is already bringing value to retailers as an add-on to existing technology stacks. 

To find out more about how Teamwork Commerce can help your retail brand integrate AI, get in touch today.

“New Year, New Me” – the phrase that many enter January with, motivated to make some form of positive change for the year ahead. For retailers, it’s more than a mantra, it is a mindset to evolve to cater to changing consumer needs and keep up with market trends. January has flown by and retailers have already started to work on their priorities for 2025.

From leaning on the potential of advanced RFID solutions to incorporating AI into wider retail operations, in our latest blog we discuss four key resolutions for retailers in 2025 to thrive in the new year.

Huge Focus on Advanced RFID

In 2025, significant focus is being placed on leveraging advanced RFID to streamline different parts of the retail ecosystem. From optimizing inventory and stock management to elevating in-store experiences and personalization, brands are harnessing RFID to drive efficiency, automation, and innovation.

Another major focus for retailers is integrating RFID technology at checkout. By improving both speed and accuracy, RFID streamlines transactions, reducing wait times and enhancing customer convenience while boosting efficiency.

Meanwhile, with returns and retail fraud increasingly becoming a challenge for brands, the industry is navigating ways to use RFID technology to address the challenges by leveraging its real-time tracking capabilities.

Teamwork Commerce uses RFID technology to improve retail operations and the customer experience. From our RFID Stock Counter App that enhances inventory visibility and accuracy to RFID-Powered Self-Checkout technology, retailers can leverage Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-enabled solutions to transform their business processes and enhance customer experiences.

Expanding the Use of AI

Another key priority for retailers in 2025 is to expand the use of AI to streamline their operations and automate processes that were previously manual tasks. After making significant strides in 2024, AI’s role in retail will only grow, driving efficiency across customer interactions, inventory management, and overall business strategy.

While AI is becoming increasingly popular in the industry, there are concerns about the technology disrupting jobs in the sector. However, it is critical to understand that AI should be leveraged to empower humans and not replace them. Brands that use AI to make human jobs simpler can better enhance the shopping experience while delivering the personal human touch that customers crave.

To empower its customers with AI, Teamwork Commerce is working in partnership with Google Cloud to develop new generative AI features in its industry-leading mobile Point of Sale (POS) and Order Management System (OMS). By enabling retailers to leverage AI in tandem with wider retail technologies such as RFID, Mobile POS, and OMS – Teamwork Commerce aims to ensure brands take a holistic approach to their technology adoption to drive long-term benefits.

Omnichannel: A Priority for 2025

In 2025, with the increased popularity of hybrid shopping models such as Buy Online, Pick-Up In-Store (BOPIS), retailers, who haven’t yet, must focus on weaving their physical stores with online shopping platforms to create a holistic shopping environment for customers.

Customer shopping journeys are becoming more complex every year, and brands need to understand how shoppers interact across different shopping platforms. This can help them create more meaningful strategies and shopping experiences that resonate with their customers, ultimately increasing consumer loyalty in the long term.

The Teamwork Commerce Mobile POS technology allows retailers to weave their online and offline retail platforms together to create a holistic shopping experience for customers. Associates can have access to customers’ online purchase history and personalize their in-store interactions, delivering a top-tier customer experience.

Filling the Gap in eCommerce  

With evolving consumer behavior, many shoppers like associates to assist them in their shopping journey. However, not all of them prefer visiting in-store. However, not many online platforms offer customer agents to offer personalized assistance. In 2025, retailers have an opportunity to fill this gap. From doing virtual walkthroughs to deploying online agents to help customers seamlessly make purchases online.

Brands that aim to deploy online agents to improve their e-commerce experience can integrate them with the cutting-edge Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The tech allows retailers to create a single source of information for every individual customer, enabling consistent visibility of every shopper. This can help e-commerce agents analyze customer purchasing habits across sales channels and make better decisions and recommendations.

Final Recommendation

As 2025 unfolds, retailers need to be strategic about their technology choices. The market is flooded with options, making it crucial to evaluate solutions carefully. To ensure they deploy the right technology that delivers significant return on investment (ROI), retailers must seek live demos, verify vendor credibility, and partner with IT experts who have a proven track record in the industry. 

Looking for help with navigating the right retail solution? Get in touch.