- Juan Vindel Farmacia has completed a three-month pilot of a new automated, hands-free purchasing solution from technology startup Futurian
- The solution enables shoppers to place goods in a bin, take them back out if they change their mind, tap their phone or payment card, and walk out past an RFID shrink-prevention reader.
Madrid pharmacy Juan Vindel Farmacia is the first drug store in Spain to implement an RFID-enabled, touch-free, self-checkout solution for prescription free products.
The system—which the store piloted for three months this spring—enables shoppers to pay for the products they want without touching a touchscreen or other surface, and even change their minds before the sale is complete. Each transaction typically takes 20 to 30 seconds, and the tagged products are then interrogated again as they leave the store, for shrink protection.
The Fast4shop solution from Spanish technology startup Futurian was designed to improve on what has been an unsteady roll-out of self-checkout systems worldwide. Too often, self-service stations and kiosks experience exceptions, misidentifications or failures that require staff members to be stationed nearby to correct.
Pilot Results
Following the pilot, the drug store reported that shoppers could easily navigate the system, add and remove items from their shopping cart, and pay with a tap of their phone or payment card. And errors or exceptions have been limited. It typically takes even those inexperienced with the technology 30 seconds or less to complete their transaction, said Juan Vindel Canorea, head licensed pharmacist at Juan Vindel Farmacia.
The technology roll-out is part of the pharmacy’s vision of a hygienic, hassle-free shopping experience for customers who are buying non-prescription products.
“The first time I learned about RFID it looked like magic to me, and I fell in love with it,” said Canorea. As he began envisioning opening a pharmacy of the future, “I knew it had to have this technology.”
Reducing Wait Times for Customers
The biggest challenge for pharmacies that he hoped to address was queueing time for customers. When lines are long, customers are less likely to make a purchase, especially when the products are not prescriptions.
In fact, the system was deployed to assist those buying prescription-free products. By providing those shoppers with an automated transaction, the lines would be shorter for the remaining customers who are buying prescriptions at a manned desk, Canorea said.
The company also wanted the technology to help prevent what Canorea said had been some minor shoplifting episodes “which were very unpleasant, and we wanted to get rid of them.”
Better Self Purchasing Experience
Futurian was launched in Valencia several years ago by a team of technology innovators: pharmacist Javier Ferrer Alós and brothers David and Juan Vincente Lladró Roig. They made Fast4shop their first product which is now commercially available for pharmacies and other retailers.
Fast4shop is an end-to-end solution based on UHF RFID technology adapted to the high hygienic requirements of the pharmacy environment.
Futurian offers it as an end-to-end solution including readers and antennas, sled-based handheld readers for inventory counts, and RFID tags that can be applied at the store or in a distribution center. The software that manages read data and related inventory counts and loss prevention can reside locally or on a cloud-based server.
The Shopping Experience
With the deployment in Madrid, each Juan Vindel Farmacia non-prescription drug product is being tagged with a passive UHF RFID flag tag, designed to ensure accurate tag read each time it is interrogated by an RFID reader.
Along with RFID readers and antennas, the system leverages specific software algorithms to ensure a tight read range, so that a tagged product is only read when it is placed directly in a bin, at the point of sale.
First, shoppers physically select their products and put them in their shopping basket. They then go to the point of sale and place those items in the payment bin. The identity of those products and their prices are displayed on the screen. If the shopper changes their mind about one of the products, they simply remove it, and the digital shopping cart is updated.
Once the shopper is satisfied with the items they are selecting, they tap their smartphone or payment card next to the terminal, and the transaction is complete.
A New Type of Self-Checkout
This feature is a novelty for self-checkout systems, said Juan Vincente Lladró Roig.
Most self-checkout systems require that customers use barcodes. And while other systems employ RFID for self-purchasing, they often demand some use of a touch screen for payments. Additionally, if a user changes their mind about a product that has been identified, removing it from the shopping cart typically requires cancelling an order.
Once the payment is made for items in the POS bin, the inventory in the back-end software is updated to reflect the sale, explained David Lladró Roig.
The retailer can use the software to update prices in real time as well.
Theft Control at the Exit
As a shopper leaves the store with their purchases, they walk underneath a ceiling mounted RFID reader which captures the tag IDs of all the products being removed. If an item that was not purchased is leaving the store, an alarm can be triggered to notify the shopper to return that item.
And the system architecture is resilient to failures in the pharmacy business management software, providing continuity for self-checkout purchases, said Juan Vincente Lladró Roig.
On a weekly basis the store staff can use a sled-based handheld RFID reader with a smart phone to walk around the shelves and read all tag IDs for an updated inventory count. The result is an accurate inventory count at the store to prevent out of stock events.
Witnessing Customer Response
With the technology in place, Canorea said he has witnessed the ease of use for the store’s customers. “Very few customers touch the display to interact with the device. We explain to them that this is a touch-less system to avoid cross-contamination,” he said.
He added that most of the customers who opt to use the system are surprised “because they do not expect such a modern device in a pharmacy. The short time required to purchase enhances the shopping experience for them.”
The staff has adapted to the touch-free payment option, which leaves them more time to serve customers who need personal help with purchases. “They know we are not going to reduce jobs but rather manage the pharmacy in a better way,” stated Canorea.
Long Term Benefits in Customer Satisfaction
In the long term, Futurian officials predicts this technology can help change the image of pharmacies, allowing stores to display products that used to be behind the desk as well as placing desirable products closer to the customer due to the anti-theft device at the door.
Ferrer Alós predicts the self-checkout service will help recover customers who were starting to purchase in other channels such as online, because they knew the pharmacy had long queues.
Futurian expects that the solution can be duplicated for other retail sectors as well, beyond pharmacies, and in other parts of the world.
“We see a big potential to begin in Spain and then expand into the rest of Europe,” Ferrer Alós said. ”Basically, the technology is here to help the customer, to help society. I want to change the perception that the customer has of the self-checkout process.”