Bunnings is trialling in-store robots who will do stock-take rounds overnight, scanning aisles and working out which stock needs replenishing.
Managing director Michael Schneider said the robots, made by tech start-up Zippedi, was part of a push towards efficiency.
“What we’re aiming to do here is reduce team member hours spent locating hand stock to be filled, or completing gap and price checks.” On top of this, Bunnings will introduce electronic shelf labelling, to “further save team member hours.”
“A variety of tools and solutions have been deployed to make team members’ jobs easier and for them to be more productive, Schneider said, “with new rostering platforms across Australia and our team management tool Workday plus our communications platform Workplace.”
Schneider said similar technology has helped Bunnings “redeployed over 2.4 million hours of task time since 2020”, with “another million hours earmarked for the financial year ahead.”
“We’re utilising data in many ways across the business to make smarter ranging decisions and give customers a more personalised experience, as well as to simplify our operations,” Schneider said.
“This is creating value from both a growth and productivity point of view.
“This is enabling us to personalise content and marketing, including emails tailored to a customer’s local store.
“We can share great value product recommendations and suggest helpful how-to content online to assist customers to make the most of their purchases.
“Customers can now use their Bunnings app to create a shopping list, find products, collect FlyBuys points and store and receive their receipts digitally.
“Soon we’ll enhance this capability making shopping even easier with barcode scanning for product discovery reviews, ecommerce in the Bunnings app to access full product ranges in-store or at home.
“We’re continuing to enhance our digital tools to provide inspiration to our customers both pre- and post-shop, engaging our customers and creating a more personalised experience, no matter where they’re shopping with us.”
