Knowledgeable Software is Powerful Software

As with many sectors, the food retail industry is becoming increasingly enriched by emerging technologies that drive efficiencies and automation across infrastructure, operations and processes. For retail, these take the form of innovations such as automatic dimming capabilities in lighting systems, air filtration adjustment in HVAC and remote temperature management. This has meant that the role of the mechanical engineer has had to continuously evolve in recent years to enable engineers and software to work efficiently alongside each other. Afterall, the job of both the engineer and the software is to maintain optimum performance for their assigned machines and ensure they run smoothly and efficiently.

However, with the importance of the mechanical engineer remaining undiminished and their digital toolkits ever growing, is the software that is being developed for these complex food retail estates being enriched by the engineer’s expertise as much as the engineers are being informed by the software?

Bridging the Knowledge Gap

Many IoT companies reside only in the digital world and the importance of physical machine knowledge and contextual understanding is all too often neglected. By relying solely on the collected data from machines, multiple opportunities are missed, or problems misunderstood, as machine data very often only provides a part of the whole picture. 

At IMS Evolve, we believe that bridging this gap is crucial in delivering the true value of retail technology.

Knowledge is Power

IMS Evolve has predicated its team, and its software, on doing just that. At its heart, IMS Evolve is a software company that has been built on significant real-world knowledge and experience of the retail environment and its infrastructure, and our diverse team comprises of subject matter experts in software, engineering and the food retail industry. By utilising this inhouse expertise, the IMS team, and by default the software we develop, is able to understand how these machines behave, their patterns, health and performance, and the operational opportunities these present. Effectively, we take the knowledge from the experts and drive that down into the software layer to deliver exponential value for our retail customers.

This insight and expertise underpins the platform beneath our innovative solutions, and drives transformative levels of visibility and automation to deliver unrivalled real-time action across targeted areas of focus for our customers. The fact that IMS Evolve understands the behaviours and characteristics of the machines and environments that we monitor and manage is what makes us truly unique.

Insights to Drive Real Change

By taking a holistic approach that combines engineering and software knowledge, IMS Evolve has developed a robust, flexible and multifaceted solution that drives a more efficient and effective engineering process for our customers. Our solution enables remote diagnosis of problems and faults before an engineer arrives on site, allowing for more accurate troubleshooting, knowledge of parts required and ultimately a faster fault-to-fix. Further, in many circumstances this enhanced knowledge and contextual understanding of an asset can enable remote fixes, freeing engineers time, lowering resource and reducing machine downtime.

In addition, the advanced levels of visibility the IMS Evolve solution provides means that the engineers approach a job armed with unrivalled levels of data and context. From visibility of historic data and previous activity to asset performance and behavioural patterns, the engineer has much more than just physical tools to help them complete a fix. 

The data insights provided by software, when enriched with engineering experience and knowledge, can prove critical to smooth retail operations and will open the door to new possibilities for asset management.

Retail technology is evolving, and so too is the role of the mechanical engineer. Only by combining expertise can retailers unlock the full potential of digitalised retail assets. Engineers are amplifying the opportunities software presents, so it is integral that software solutions deliver exactly what the assets, engineers and retailers require to realise the full potential that this new era of smart retail technology holds.