Amber Hickman |
A range of Microsoft partners demonstrated AI-powered solutions and strategies for the retail industry at NRF 2025, which took place from 12-14 January in New York.
At the Avanade booth, attendees experienced personalised demonstrations with the Growth Lab and the Optimization Station to discover how AI can elevate customer experience and unlock cost efficiencies.
In addition, Ruth Harrison, global retail and consumer goods lead at Avanade, took to the stage with Gina Claxton, corporate vice president of US retail and consumer goods at Microsoft, to discuss how both firms are working with mobile florist 1-800-Flowers to help it deploy AI across its operations
Meanwhile, Diebold Nixdorf hosted a ‘store of tomorrow’ at its booth, where attendees could visit and discover how AI technology can be applied across the full store, from reducing delays at self-service checkouts and speeding up checkouts with multi-item recognition, to hazard detection to prevent slips and falls and protecting employees from dangerous situations such as robberies. The firm also demonstrated its new solution, the Vynamic Smart Vision platform, which is designed to help retailers reduce the most common sources of loss during fresh produce scanning and age verification for restricted sales.
ToolsGroup also exhibited a range of solutions designed to help retailers tackle current industry challenges, including Price.io, Prom.io and its newest product Inventory.io. With many retailers concerned about the year ahead, Inventory.io uses AI-powered learning engines that are designed to help businesses manage fluctuating demands across omnichannel supply chains.
Finally, Zebra Technologies revealed its new Zebra Mobile Computing AI Suite and Zebra Companion, solutions designed to help retailers integrate AI into their workflows. Attendees saw live demonstrations on the Zebra booth and learned how the hardware and software solutions are designed to suit an AI-powered store.