Anything But Off The Shelf

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

September 2015 Innovative Retail Technologies

To develop a multidisciplinary IP surveillance infrastructure that would serve LP and operations, Kroger took innovation into its own hands.

Like many directors of LP in large retail environments, Karl Langhorst spent many hours in 2013 doing due diligence on a path of migration from analog CCTV to IP video. While Langhorst’s approach to $108 billion Kroger’s migration to IP video began the conventional way — an analysis of market-ready platforms from leading providers — it soon took a dramatically different turn. “Through internal discussions with our partners in R&D, we realized there was work going on inside our four walls that could hold great potential for a homegrown solution,” he says.

Led by Sr. Director Brett Bonner, the R&D arm at Kroger was working on the development of a then-unnamed interconnected IT system that would include a number of radio and IoT (Internet of Things)-based technologies to enable everything from consumer-facing shopping tools to mobile device-enabled temperature monitoring for food safety. As the conversation between LP and R&D progressed, synergies emerged. “We were mapping an efficient grid that would provide good radio communications for our R&D initiatives,” says Bonner. “Karl was mapping out a migration to IP video. And, it seemed everywhere we looked there was a camera.” That got Bonner and Langhorst thinking; instead of developing and supporting two autonomous infrastructures to meet each department’s objectives, would it be possible to build one platform that would serve store operations and LP?