HOLMES stands for Holistic Management of Exceptional Sales Patterns. Using artificial intelligence, the tool is now supporting our store employees during the pilot phase in around 100 PENNY stores in finding items that are hidden on the shelf or currently sold out, for example.

"We are specifically looking at transaction data in the store and analysing it with the help of AI. This allows us to recognise certain patterns, which we then use to explain anomalies in sales," explains Lorenz Determann, Head of Analytics.

"To do this, we initially 'fed' the AI with thousands of receipts so that it could recognise patterns and continue to refine them," adds Julian Mennenöh, Head of Sales and Business Functions in the Analytics department. "As a result, the AI became better and better at recognising anomalies."

In addition, the market employees now support the work on the list with feedback: "This means we can not only check the patterns we have learnt in practice in the market, but also help to keep improving them. The sophisticated technology can support the employees in the stores and offer our customers the shopping experience they want," explains Alexander Moser, Head of Digitalisation, Projects and Processes - Sales Department at PENNY.

Heike Matusche, Product Owner Analytics, and Mirko Kopilas, Project Manager IT Projects, explain in the film how holistic detective work helps to fulfil all customer wishes.