Retail technology innovation of the week: HyperFinity taps AI for new pricing optimisation product

Retail Technology Innovation of the Week is a series brought to you by RTIH and sponsored by 3D Cloud, highlighting stand out deployments, launches, and initiatives by retailers and tech suppliers.

Every week, we will showcase forward thinking tech plays that have impressed our Editor and the Retail Technology Innovations Report judging panel, alongside the publication of the 2024 report.

So far, we’ve flagged up sterling work being done by Ocado Retail, Decathlon, Lacoste, Downtown Spirits, TalkShopLive, Huck’s, Rovertown, Wing, Nobody’s Child, IKI, Pixevia, Walmart, A.L.C., Archive, Therabody, Outform, Kingfisher, PMC, Boots UK, Ocula Technologies, Grace O'Malley Irish Whiskey, Metacask, Ikea, Carrefour Belgium, Matalan, and McDonald’s.

And this week we’re focusing on HyperFinity, a decision intelligence platform for retailers that has announced the launch of a new AI powered pricing product.

"Manual pricing spreadsheets are cumbersome and outdated," says Thomas Hill, Chief Customer Officer at HyperFinity.

"Our AI powered solution provides retailers with the insights they need to make informed pricing decisions and maximise profitability. We’ve seen great results so far, including more than 5% increase in profit margins."

Operating in a complex retail landscape is challenging. The UK is on the cusp of a general election. Cost prices are rising. Consumers are minimising discretionary purchases. Earlier in June, Barclays reported card spend growth had hit a three-year low.

"With so much change on the horizon, insight driven pricing optimisation is the logical next step," says Hill.

"As former retail data scientists, we understand the difficulties faced by retailers only too well. Our pricing product addresses the frustrations of trading, merchandising, finance, and other commercial functions, as well as those in analytics, data science and insight roles." 

HyperFinity says that its SaaS tool presents data and insight in an easy-to-consume format.

It replaces multiple spreadsheets; eliminates single points of failure; measures the impact of price changes, and eases the pressure on busy analytics and data science teams with a backlog of work.

Key features include:

Understand the price sensitivity of products: Use price elasticity to establish where you can make price moves without losing demand.

Create price actions: Create AI driven actions against every product in your range. For example, ‘increase price’.

Model price impact: Model out commercial scenarios based on price change decisions to understand margin impact.

Measure sales performance: Monitor ongoing sales performance using a series of interactive BI dashboards and alerts.

HyperFinity works with a number of household names, including value greetings card retailer, cardfactory.

Director of Insight and Customer Experience Liz Lamb comments: "HyperFinity have been instrumental in helping us understand the role of pricing for cardfactory.”

“Their use of data and AI has enabled us to make insight driven pricing decisions that consider our business goals and the expectations of our customers. HyperFinity are a valuable and trusted partner to cardfactory.”

“They stand out for their expertise in applying data science to make great pricing, marketing, and assortment decisions."

2023 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

Costa Coffee emerged victorious at the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony.

Our 2023 winners were announced during a glittering ceremony at the Barbican Centre in Central London on Wednesday, 29th November.

Costa Coffee picked up the Technology Implementation of the Year (UK) gong for a project that saw it work with HyperFinity to use decision intelligence to unlock value from data by: personalising the brand’s loyalty scheme ‘Costa Club’, using insights from customer data; making intelligent operational decisions about their stores and product range.

This led to considerable year-on-year growth in Costa’s loyalty base across all metrics - including consumers, transactions, and revenue. It translated to a more sophisticated understanding of consumers and the critical capability to deliver personalised offers and marketing, supporting better decision making.

2024 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

The sixth edition of the RTIH Innovation Awards is now open for entries.

The awards, sponsored by CADS, 3D Cloud, and Retail Technology Show 2025, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

This year, we’re bringing you three new categories: AI Innovation, Sustainable Retail Innovation, and Inclusive Technology Innovation.

Key 2024 dates

Friday, 25th October: Award entry deadline 

Tuesday, 29th October: 2024 shortlist revealed

30th October-6th November: Judging days

Thursday, 21st November: Winners announced at the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, to be held at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London.