Collaboration Poised to Transform Retail Ops and Deliver AI-Powered Insights at Speed and Scale

(PRUnderground) July 16th, 2024

Centific, a leading provider of enterprise AI platforms and GenAI (Generative AI) data solutions, and Lenovo, a global technology powerhouse, are collaborating to provide retailers with turnkey edge compute options for quickly and easily deploying Centific’s flagship Retail Intelligence Platform, Pitaya.  Through the Lenovo AI Innovators program, Lenovo and NVIDIA enable Centific customers to gain access to a simplified way to adopt their powerful AI solution at scale, providing a combined software and hardware system that is both easy to implement on existing infrastructure and support.

Pitaya provides retailers with rapid ROI realization through in-store and back-of-house insights without additional CAPEX and optimized OPEX. Furthermore, by leveraging Generative AI, Pitaya enables retailers to transform their terabytes of data, including store footage, into direct actions for store associates. With Pitaya, retailers will be able to tackle use cases such as loss prevention (Self-Checkout and Assisted Checkout), inventory management (Out of Stocks), .com-like customer journey analytics, as well as warehouse optimization.

Featuring the ability to customize and integrate with both enterprise systems and additional point-solutions, Pitaya’s scalability and adaptability make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, ushering in an era of unparalleled efficiency and profitability.

“Pitaya’s modular solution empowers retailers to tailor the platform to specific requirements and budgets, ensuring flexibility and alignment with the unique needs of every business. Through this partnership, Centific and Lenovo are pioneering the future of retail intelligence, empowering retailers to thrive in an increasingly digital world with one point of contact. Together, we are shaping the future of retail, where AI-driven insights drive innovation, enhance competitiveness, and exceed customer expectations,” said Robert Daigle, Director of ISG Global AI Business at Lenovo.

The Lenovo AI Innovators partnership combined with Centific and Lenovo’s membership in the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI partner ecosystem, expedites the time-to-value for businesses, helping to ensure rapid return on investment. Their shared ability to act as a united single point of contact for customers will help facilitate successful technology deployment and management, simplifying communication, coordination, and issue resolution. Additionally, access to Lenovo’s powerful GPU-enabled computing devices, specialized AI accelerators, and AI-focused software frameworks will help further enhance the performance and capabilities of Centific’s Pitaya. Centific also leverages the NVIDIA Metropolis suite of developer tools and frameworks for vision AI app deployments.

Understanding massive amounts of visual data requires incredible speed, storage, and performance – all the criteria that Lenovo systems accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs provide. By leveraging generative AI and Vision Language Models (VLM), Pitaya by Centific empowers retailers to transform terabytes of data, including store footage from Video Management Systems, into direct actions for store associates.

“With Pitaya now certified on Lenovo’s retail tech stack, retailers gain access to a powerful, end-to-end retail intelligence platform that unlocks valuable insights from store data. Whether it’s predicting customer preferences or optimizing asset protection and inventory management, retailers can make data-driven decisions in real time that drive growth and profitability,” said Jagadish Garimella, Head of Retail and CPG Solutions at Centific. “This collaboration isn’t merely about tech — it’s about sculpting a seamless, intuitive, and revolutionary retail experience that resonates with all stakeholders.”

Lenovo’s AI Innovators Program facilitates access to pre-built enterprise AI solutions, streamlining deployment for faster, more efficient operations. Partners of the Lenovo AI Innovators Program get access to the Lenovo Responsible AI Committee, which evaluates new technology and prioritizes diversity and inclusion, transparency, sustainability, and security to help ensure AI innovations are responsible, ethical, and human-centric. Through the program, organizations can find business-ready generative AI solutions that help improve their customer experience, increase satisfaction and retention, reallocate resources, and enhance decision-making by harnessing the value of their data.

This Vision AI aggregated solution is an easy-to-deploy platform for system integrators and reseller partners and is exclusively available for channel partners through TD SYNNEX as part of its Destination AI program. “TD SYNNEX is committed to providing partners with innovative AI solutions that accelerate growth for their businesses and we are proud to bring this Vision AI solution to our channel partners to provide advanced intelligence to their retail customers,” said Lisa McGarvey, VP of Data/AI & Solutions at TD SYNNEX.

Centific’s collaboration with Lenovo is part of a broader ecosystem of partnerships aimed at transforming the retail industry. Together with other strategic partners, Centific and Lenovo are driving innovation and redefining the retail landscape.

Fast Facts: Key Retailer Benefits

1. Safe Scalable Deployment: Lenovo ThinkEdge servers include security features that help to ensure uncompromised hardware protection with zero trust deployment, facilitating direct factory-to-retail location shipments.

2. Enhanced Data Protection: Centific prioritizes robust data security across all stages, from pre-AI data acquisition to post-AI activities such as red teaming and HIL testing. Pitaya’s compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and PII standards underscores our commitment to privacy.

3. Rapid ROI Realization: Pitaya expedites ROI realization and resource optimization through:

• Flexibility: Address future business challenges with agility and enhance solution value by easily adding and removing use cases as business challenges and priorities evolve
• Integration with Existing Infrastructure: Seamlessly integrate with IP cameras, Video Management Systems, and Enterprise Systems.
• NVIDIA Technology: Benefit from best-in-class vision AI and generative AI software development tools and frameworks with the  NVIDIA Metropolis and NVIDIA NeMo platforms.
• Accelerated ROI: With Lenovo ThinkEdge compute, deploy new models out to multiple stores seamlessly and instantly for powerful AI-optimized computing where and when it is needed.

For more information about Pitaya, Centific’s Retail Intelligence Platform, visit: https://pitaya.ai

About Centific

Centific is a frontier AI data foundry that curates diverse, high-quality data, using our purpose-built technology platforms to empower the Magnificent Seven and our enterprise clients with safe, scalable AI deployment. Our team includes more than 150 PhDs and data scientists, along with more than 4,000 AI practitioners and engineers. We harness the power of an integrated solution ecosystem—comprising industry-leading partnerships and 1.8 million vertical domain experts in more than 230 markets—to create contextual, multilingual, pre-trained datasets; fine-tuned, industry-specific LLMs; and RAG pipelines supported by vector databases. Our zero-distance innovation solutions for GenAI can reduce GenAI costs by up to 80% and bring solutions to market 50% faster.

Our mission is to bridge the gap between AI creators and industry leaders by bringing best practices in GenAI to unicorn innovators and enterprise customers. We aim to help these organizations unlock significant business value by deploying GenAI at scale, helping to ensure they stay at the forefront of technological advancement and maintain a competitive edge in their respective markets.

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Original Press Release.