WHY RETAILNEXT

Solution Comparison

Choosing how to approach retail analytics is one of the most consequential technology decisions a retailer makes. The right platform will underpin your operational decisions for years. The wrong one will cost more — in budget, in internal resource, and in missed opportunity — than you expect.

This page is designed to help you make that decision clearly. We've laid out the four approaches retailers consider, what each one actually costs and delivers, and where RetailNext fits relative to the alternatives.

Four Ways to Approach RETAIL ANALYTICS.

Most retailers evaluate one or more of these approaches. Each has genuine trade-offs across cost, capability, time to value, and long-term risk.

Integrated Platform

One vendor. One dataset. Complete intelligence across traffic, behavioral analytics, and asset protection. Faster time to value, lower total cost of ownership, and a single support relationship.

Point Solutions

Separate vendors for traffic counting, heat mapping, loss prevention, and analytics. More control over individual components — but significantly more complexity, cost, and data reconciliation.

Build In-House

Custom analytics developed by your engineering team using commodity hardware. Maximum control and IP ownership — but 12-24 months to basic functionality, ongoing engineering cost, and no benchmark data.

Status Quo

POS data, manual counts, and assumptions. No investment — but the hidden cost of poor decisions, missed optimization, and competitive disadvantage compounds over time.

Not All Analytics ARE EQUAL.

Accuracy, completeness, time to value, and total cost of ownership vary dramatically across these approaches. Here's the honest comparison.

RetailNext vs COMPETITIVE PLATFORMS.

When evaluating integrated retail analytics platforms, these are the dimensions that matter most. RetailNext's advantages are grounded in purpose-built hardware, a unified platform, and 19+ years of retail-specific innovation.

One Platform vs MULTIPLE POINT SOLUTIONS.

Many retailers start by assembling point solutions — a traffic counter from one vendor, heat mapping from another, loss prevention from a third. The logic seems sound: best-of-breed for each function. The reality is more complicated.

The Point Solution Scenario

• Vendor A for traffic counting
• Vendor B for heat mapping and behavioral analytics
• Vendor C for loss prevention and video
• Internal or third-party BI tool to aggregate it all
• 3-5 vendor contracts, support relationships, and renewal negotiations
• Data that never fully reconciles across sources
• Internal resources consumed managing vendor complexity

The RetailNext Reality

• Traffic Analytics, Insights, and Asset Protection in one platform
• One unified dataset — no reconciliation required
• One vendor relationship, one contract, one support team
• API included for BI tool integration at no extra cost
• Combined total cost of point solutions typically exceeds the platform price
• Single deployment, single onboarding, unified dashboards

Buy Proven OR BUILD FROM SCRATCH.

For some retailers, building in-house feels like the right strategic move — control, IP ownership, and a custom fit to your specific data architecture. Here's what that actually looks like in practice for most retail organizations.

The Hidden Cost OF STANDING STILL.

The status quo always feels like the low-risk option. No budget, no implementation, no disruption. But for multi-location retailers, the cost of making decisions on incomplete data compounds across every store, every week.

Labor Misalignment

Scheduling to assumption rather than actual and predicted traffic typically costs 5-10% in unnecessary labor spend or missed service levels. Across a 100-store network, that's a significant and recurring cost.

Missed Conversion

Without accurate traffic data, you can't calculate a true conversion rate — which means you can't identify which stores are underperforming or why. Industry data shows 15-20% conversion improvement is achievable with data-driven optimization.

Unvalidated Merchandising

Layout and fixture decisions made without behavioral data carry high risk. A failed fleet-wide rollout can cost millions. Test-and-learn methodology reduces that risk to near zero — but only if you have the data to run it.

Uncontrolled Shrink

Without integrated asset protection and POS exception reporting, shrink is difficult to detect proactively and even harder to investigate efficiently. Integrated platforms reduce investigation time by up to 75%.

The Case for RETAILNEXT.

The numbers that matter most when choosing a retail analytics partner.

95-99%

People counting accuracy

Manually audited at every installation

4-6 weeks

Average deployment timeline

vs 12-24 months to build in-house

0+

Year average customer partnership

RetailNext customer base

0+

Retailers globally

100+ countries

Common QUESTIONS.

About the comparison

• How does RetailNext's accuracy compare to competitors?
  RetailNext delivers 95–99% people-counting accuracy with the AI-powered Aurora® sensor, which samples each shopper up to ten times per second. Every installation is manually audited at go-live, with up to 30 days of HD video available for independent validation. Many point counters quote headline accuracy but offer no way to verify it in your stores; RetailNext is built to prove its numbers and hold that accuracy over time.

• What are the hidden costs of using multiple point solutions?
  Stitching together separate tools for counting, conversion, heat-mapping, and loss prevention creates costs that rarely appear on the quote: integration work to connect them, time spent reconciling numbers that disagree, duplicate hardware and contracts, and the staff effort to keep it all running. You also lose a single source of truth, which slows decisions. A unified platform removes that overhead by capturing everything from one sensor and one data model.

• When does building retail analytics in-house actually make sense?
  Building in-house can make sense for the few retailers with a large, dedicated data-science and computer-vision team, a multi-year roadmap, and the appetite to own hardware, accuracy tuning, and ongoing maintenance. For most, the time-to-value, accuracy, and total cost of buying a proven platform far outweigh a build. RetailNext delivers capabilities that would take years to replicate, fully supported and improving continuously.

About choosing RetailNext

• How long does RetailNext take to implement?
  Most retailers are live within a few weeks, depending on store count and site readiness. RetailNext handles sensor calibration and a manual accuracy audit at go-live, and rollouts scale from a single pilot store to thousands of locations on a coordinated schedule.

• How does RetailNext's pricing compare to assembling point solutions?
  Because RetailNext combines sensor, software, support, and updates in one platform, pricing is transparent and typically lands below the all-in cost of licensing and integrating several specialized tools. You avoid stacked subscriptions, integration fees, and the ongoing maintenance burden of a multi-vendor stack. The comparison is best made on total cost of ownership, not headline license price.

• What support and customer success does RetailNext provide long-term?
  RetailNext provides full support coverage 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday, with weekend cover for critical incidents, plus a platform status page for real-time visibility. Beyond reactive support, customers get onboarding, accuracy audits, and ongoing customer success to keep the platform aligned with their goals as their store estate and priorities evolve.