S1 Ep 15
This week Colin Peacock is joined by Professor Adrian Peacock to reflect on our Self-checkout innovation summit in Brussels earlier this year.
We discuss the latest innovations in self-checkouts, and the ongoing energy among retailers to drive change at SCOs.
Over 70 retailers participated in the meeting, hosted by Carrefour - with an agenda that included store visits, speed dating with innovators, deep dive retailer case studies on technology, design and people and an informal network evening. Here are the highlights.
Podcast summary
Self-checkout innovation is no longer just about technology. It’s a cross-functional conversation about participation, loss, and customer experience.
In this episode, Colin Peacock is joined by Professor Adrian Beck to reflect on a two-day self-checkout innovation summit hosted by Carrefour in Brussels.
With over 60 retailers and innovators attending, they explore key takeaways on scan accuracy, customer friction, and real-world interventions from Tesco, Carrefour, Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and more.
Plus, they unpack the growing complexity of self-checkout formats, the value of in-person collaboration, and why barbecues matter just as much as tech showcases.
Cleaned transcript
COLIN:
Welcome to the ECR Retail Loss Sell More and Lose Less podcast series.
Earlier this year, 60 retail professionals from retailers around the world joined us in Brussels for a self-checkout innovation summit.
I’m joined today by Professor Adrian Beck. We’ll reflect on the key findings and discussion points from Brussels.
We’ll focus on how to improve participation at self-checkouts while reducing walkaways and improving scan accuracy.
We’ve just got back from Brussels. Eurostar tried to delay us, but we fought through.
We had a cracking couple of days, hosted by Carrefour.
We had around 60 retailers there, about 15 people from startups and innovation companies.
We had lots of store visits. We had presentations from Tesco, Carrefour, Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Sainsbury’s, Big Y, and then lots of interactive discussions and an innovation showcase.
And of course, the highlight: beers and barbecue on the patio in the evening. We had great weather as well.
What a fantastic thing that was.
But above all, Adrian, what were your key thoughts as we walked away from that meeting and reflect on it now?
What was good? What was bad? What would you do differently? Or just overall impressions?
Early impressions of the self-checkout innovation summit
ADRIAN:
I thought it was an excellent two days, Colin.
You put a lot of time and effort into organising it, as did Carrefour. We really appreciated their hospitality and access to their organisation.
We’re very familiar now with online meetings, where we get together for an hour and go through a topic.
Every now and again, it is so good to get together and break bread.
Spending time talking through issues over more than one hour, doing it formally and informally, is really valuable.
I got a lot just from catching up with people and the networking you can do physically that you simply can’t do as easily virtually.
It was a big tick for me in terms of the value that comes from investing time to meet people in person.
What I also got out of it was the amount of energy that retailers have now around self-checkout.
They’re trying to understand the best ways it can bring value to their businesses, but also not jeopardise their businesses in terms of the risk that is now very clearly present.
I was really struck by how willing retailers are to share their experiences.
You mentioned some of the companies that made presentations. I thought all the presentations were fantastic in their openness and willingness to share what’s going on in their organisations.
They shared their experiences of using different interventions, but it wasn’t just a constant technology show.
There’s recognition that retailing is still pretty much a people business.
Retailers were talking about investing in their people, in their training, and in their processes, and how they work in those spaces.
There was a huge amount of learning that people got from that.
Shift from moaning about SCO to cross-functional energy
COLIN:
If I build on that and reflect back, we’ve been researching self-checkouts now for 11, 12, 15 years.
If I look back at the audience we had back in the day, it was mainly loss prevention people.
And if I’m being really naughty, they were moaning about self-checkouts.
We had that conversation about “shooting yourselves in the foot” and all that sort of stuff.
But you’re absolutely right.
Now I sense there was energy and cross-functional discussions.
There were positive discussions around friction versus interventions and controls.
That was really great to see.
Many retailers sent both their customer service or proposition people, who own the front end, along with people from operations who look at controls.
That generated a lot of energy and passion.
You’re spot on about the energy. There was high energy for change and a sense that things can really improve and deliver a better proposition to the customer.
Love that.
Different perspectives on self-checkout innovation: loss prevention vs customer experience
ADRIAN:
A good example of what you’re saying came from one of the presentations.
On the one hand, you had the loss prevention team saying, “In an ideal world, I would audit every single Scan & Go customer. That’s what I’d love to do because it’s in my DNA.”
On the other hand, you had the front-end team saying, “In an ideal world, I don’t want anybody audited as part of this process. I want it to be the slickest, easiest process.”
They have to come together and make sure they’re building the right way to deliver what’s good for the business and the consumer.
We’re now seeing compromise around how to make those business choices work most effectively for organisations.
That requires collaboration across different functions.
If you just go to either end of the spectrum, you end up with a very dysfunctional approach.
I was listening intently to how these different people were talking about the proposition and the problem.
They were listening to each other and trying to find a middle ground.
That inspires innovation.
It inspires new ways of thinking. Just the two molecules touching each other and boom: we’ve got a different way of doing an algorithm, or a different way of managing the gates, or a different way of managing the people.
So yes, absolutely spot on.
Concrete takeaways and value from the self-checkout innovation seminar
ADRIAN:
I came away, and I think the retailers came away, with lots of ideas.
You captured it at the end when you asked, “What will you take away from this meeting?”
People had pretty impressive lists of things they wanted to try out, do, and find out more about.
There’s a lot of value people got from the investment in time.
These are clearly high investments in terms of two days of people’s time and travel and so on.
But lots of people went away with very clear to-do lists from what they’d heard from other retailers and from the innovators we had in the room sharing their ideas on how they think they can resolve this.
I think the group got a lot of benefit from the two days together.
Role of innovators and the friction vs controls debate
COLIN:
That was good, listening to those innovators.
We had nine of them, and they all had different perspectives and ideas.
That’s part of the innovation piece: finding new ways and managing friction versus controls.
Exciting.
ADRIAN:
It is, because self-checkout is getting more and more complicated.
There are so many different variants now.
It’s not just a fixed SCO machine. You have six different types of fixed SCO machines.
You’ve got mobile SCO, you’ve got Scan & Go, you’ve got whole-store SCO.
There are all these variants out there.
Retailers are having to be much more sophisticated in tailoring their approach for the different sorts of SCOs they’re using.
You may have some stores with four or five different types of SCO in the same store.
Each one requires a subtly different way to make sure they’re delivering value to the business, not causing too much loss, and at the same time not causing too much inconvenience to the consumer.
Final reflections on the self-checkout innovation summit
COLIN:
So, your takeaway summary was: great to be in person, and you’re inspired by the energy to make improvements and the great presentations.
What’s not to like about that?
ADRIAN:
And an excellent barbecue that didn’t give me food poisoning.
What’s not to like about that?
COLIN:
That’s a bonus.
And a rainy Belgium.
ADRIAN:
And a rainy Belgium, yes.
COLIN:
It’s a win-win.
Very good. Thank you very much, Adrian.
ADRIAN:
Pleasure. Appreciate your feedback. Thank you.
COLIN:
All right. Cheers, mate. Bye-bye.
