Conversational Chatbot
The conversational chatbot has made it past the POC stage and is in a holding pattern until we
get PoST productionized and available for use across any internal platforms. We're going to combine Rasa's open source conversational chatbot with PoST to perform powerful searches for both internal users as well as our customers. The #2 reason customers call our branches is to check stock availability -- our chatbot will be able to provide that information and direct customers to alternate branch locations if their local branch is out of stock. More to come on this project in early 2023.
PoST
PoST is a Parts of Speech Tagger originally created to help in improve the search results on the Reece e-commerce website. PoST uses NLP, Regex, and fuzzy matching to analyze product titles and break them down into industry standard parts of speech. PoST then uses those individual parts of speech to better search the company’s product data warehouse and return accurate results relative to the terms searched.
PoST will also replace the existing NLP engine used in SCOUT and will be leveraged to assist in the company wide PIM project. PoST will roll out in version releases at the end of December 2022, January 2023, and February 2023.
SCOUT
SCOUT combines
OCR (optical character recognition) and NLP (natural language processing) to streamline the commercial quotation process for our plumbing estimator team. SCOUT can reduce manual input times from 1-2 hours down to 1-2 minutes. SCOUT is currently in field testing and we're working to improve the accuracy of the tool, to extend the functionality, and to introduce small levels of customization for each estimator office.
If you're a Reece USA employee and are located at a branch, at the RSC, or connected to the VPN, you can learn more about SCOUT by visiting scout.reece.com.
Reece Bath & Kitchen Placeholder Website
A new Reece Bath & Kitchen website is currently under construction by our Digital Solutions team -- in the interim, the Innovation team pitched the idea of creating a placeholder Shopify site for several of reasons:
1. Reduce the pressure on the Digital Solutions team to turn around a 26-week project in a compressed 13-week window.
2. Allow the experiences building the Shopify Bath & Kitchen website to deliver learning lessons that can be applied on the Digital Solutions project -- the Innovation team experiences the pain points on a small scale and communicates those findings to the Digital Solutions team.
3. Establish best practices for URL formatting, product titles, product descriptions, product images, and product search. Document that information and share it with the wider organization.
Click here to visit the Bath & Kitchen Shopify solution.
Bath & Kitchen Digital Showroom
The Innovation team was given the opportunity to plan a new feature for our new Bath & Kitchen showrooms – strategically placed QR codes. The QR codes serve two audiences:
- Our customers. Allow the customers to learn more about the products, see pricing, and related products when the click on strategically placed QR codes throughout the showroom.
- Our consultants. Allow our team members to pull up information quickly about products while on the showroom floor with customers.
As part of the project, the Innovation team pitched the products to include, the location of the QR codes, the method of displaying the codes in the showroom, and the design / layout of the coordinating product pages on the Shopify B&K website.
Scan the QR code to visit the Digital Showroom landing page on the B&K website (or click here).
Bath & Kitchen Digital Displays
As part of the digital showroom concept, the Bath & Kitchen team will be able to walk the showroom with customers, save products they’re interested in to a Wishlist, and return to a seating area to review product selections with customers. Those selections and more will be visible on in-showroom digital displays.
The Innovation team researched the displays and worked with the B&K team to make a final selection. The team then pre-purchased the selected touchscreen display to test installation, functionality, and usage in the Innovation Lab, and created the “how to” manual for working with customers in the showrooms on the displays.
Projects in Process
We have a backlog of projects that will go through our structured Discovery & POC process -- our goal is to deliver 8 POCs (proof of concepts aka prototypes) per year. Currently, we have FOUR active projects that are in varying stages of Discovery & POC. We look forward to introducing those projects at a future date, below are hints around what's in process:
- Knowledge Management
- Image Classification
- Sales Trend Analysis
- Industry Influencers
Non-Innovation Projects
In addition to leading our own Discovery and POC processes, our team is actively involved in non-innovation led projects throughout the company. Those projects include, but are not limited to:
- Competitive Market Pricing Tool
- Accounts Payable Transformation Project
- Credit Line Automation Project
- IT Department Blog