What data does RetailNext's AI use to answer questions?

It uses your own measured store data, not inferences drawn from the open internet. Our sensors capture the full shopper journey, from storefront passby and entrance through movement, dwell, engagement and transaction, and Pulse AI answers from the same metrics that sit behind your dashboards. Across our customer base that dataset covers billions of shopping journeys a year in more than 100 countries, which is what gives the benchmark context its weight.

Can Pulse AI forecast or predict store performance?

Yes. Predictive Traffic produces a 45-day forecast built from your own historical store data, so you can plan labor, staffing and promotional cover against what is coming rather than what already happened. It is included in the standard subscription at no additional cost. Forecasting and anomaly detection both depend on continuous history to compare against, which is why the completeness of the underlying data matters as much as the model.

How does RetailNext compare to newer AI-first retail analytics vendors?

The model is rarely the constraint. What separates AI in this market is the data it reasons over, and that is the one thing a new platform cannot start with, because it begins collecting your data the day you sign. Our dataset already holds trusted measurement through every season and trading cycle, which is what makes year-on-year comparison, credible anomaly detection and peer benchmarking possible. A newer vendor can license a better model. It cannot backfill history.

Is my data used to train AI models, and who is the AI provider?

Pulse AI is powered by Anthropic. We name our provider because you are entitled to know whose model processes your questions, and because if that ever changes you should hear it from us. RetailNext does not permit its third-party AI providers to train their models on customer data without explicit permission. What reaches the provider is the aggregated, dashboard-level metrics that already appear in your reports, not raw or sensitive business data.

Does Pulse AI cost extra, and how do we control who can use it?

Pulse AI is included in every subscription at no additional cost, with unlimited use, and it is enabled for all users, so there is nothing to switch on. You stay in control: an administrator can limit visibility per user, or turn the feature off entirely, in Admin Settings under Pulse AI. Access follows each user's existing RetailNext permissions either way, so Pulse AI cannot show anyone data they could not already see in the platform.

WHY RETAILNEXT

Our AI Advantage

Q: Can we use our own AI tool with RetailNext data?

Yes. RetailNext is available as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector, so your data can be queried securely from the AI environment your team already trusts. Access is authenticated against each user's own RetailNext login and scoped to the permissions they already have. It works independently of Pulse AI and carries no additional cost.

Every analytics vendor is talking about AI. Far fewer can tell you what their AI actually knows. We measure billions of shopping journeys a year, across more than 100 countries, from storefront passby through to transaction. That is the largest body of in-store shopper data in retail, and that nuance is built into how our AI reads retail. That expertise, applied to your own measured data, is why our AI answers questions that others can only estimate.

AI is not a feature we added. It runs through the sensor on your ceiling, the integrity of the data it produces, the answers your teams get in seconds, and the way our own team works every day.

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A Retail Operating System

Billions of shopping journeys a year, across hundreds of retailers and categories. Because traffic, sales, and staffing sit in one system, our AI can answer what actually drives conversion and the right shopper-to-staff ratio, rather than inferring across three disconnected tools.

Depth Others Do Not Measure

An AI can only answer what was measured. So we measure storefront passby, entry, the path through the store, dwell, engagement, and the transaction, which is why our AI can tell you what shoppers did, not just how many arrived.

History You Cannot Backfill

A new platform starts collecting your data the day you sign. Ours has trusted data from every season and trading cycle in the dataset. That continuity is what makes year-on-year comparisons and credible anomaly detection possible.

Context At The Core

Pulse AI is the conversational layer inside RetailNext, and it sits on nearly every page: Analytics, Video, Reports, Security Events, Point of Sale, dashboards and Admin. It reads the page you're on, so answers come back in the context of what you're viewing.

AI Is Only as Good as THE DATA BEHIND IT.

General-purpose AI tools infer store performance from whatever they can find on the open internet. Pulse AI answers from your own measured data, collected by sensors we built for retail and audited at installation. The quality of the answer starts with the quality of the input, and no model can reason data it was never given.

Proven integrity at up to 99% accuracy, audited store by store, in more than 100 countries.

AI Runs Through THE ENTIRE PLATFORM.

In retail analytics, AI usually means a chat box attached to a dashboard. At RetailNext, it starts at the sensor and runs all the way to the recommendation.

A team at a glass board working through a plan together

AI at the Sensor, Since 2017

The Aurora® sensor uses AI-powered computer vision to tell shoppers apart from staff and from objects, on the device, before any data leaves the store. We have been shipping AI at the edge since 2017. It is the reason our counts are accurate enough to schedule labor against and measure conversion on.

Proof point: 95 to 99% people-counting accuracy, manually audited at every installation.

AI That Keeps Your Data Whole

You switch vendors. Stores lose connectivity. An imputation model draws on weeks of historical patterns to fill the gap, so an outage never breaks a year-on-year comparison or quietly distorts a regional average. Continuous data is a prerequisite for trustworthy AI, not a refinement.

Proof point: Year-on-year comparison stays intact through outages, with no manual correction.

Two analysts reviewing store performance data on screen

A retail team planning ahead together in a meeting

AI That Looks Forward

Predictive Traffic gives you a 45-day forecast built from your own historical store data. Plan labor, staffing, and promotional cover against what is coming rather than what already happened.

Proof point: 45-day traffic forecast, included in the standard subscription at no additional cost.

Ask Anything. GROUNDED IN YOUR OWN DATA.

Pulse AI is a conversational layer inside the RetailNext platform. Your team asks a question about their stores in plain language and gets an answer in seconds, drawn from the same measured data behind their dashboards. It is included in every subscription at no additional cost.

SEE PULSE AI IN ACTION

Three Reasons It Is Not a General-purpose Chatbot

Grounded, not guessing.

General-purpose assistants infer. Pulse AI queries your own metrics through RetailNext APIs and answers from what was actually measured in your stores. Where the data does not support an answer, it does not invent one.

Retail-tuned, not general-purpose.

It has been tuned to work as a retail and analytics expert. It knows what conversion, capture rate, dwell, and shopper yield mean on a shop floor, and it reads the page you are on, so you get answers in the context of what you are looking at.

Permission-aware by default.

Pulse AI inherits each user's existing RetailNext permissions. If someone cannot see POS data in the platform, Pulse AI cannot see it on their behalf. Administrators can limit visibility per user at any time.

What Pulse AI Does Today

The Pulse AI daily huddle brief inside the RetailNext platform

Answers questions on traffic, conversion, sales, dwell and shopper yield, at store, region and fleet level
Answers RetailNext product-related questions to accelerate issue resolution. Setup, settings, and troubleshooting guidance drawn from the official RetailNext Knowledge Base, with a link to the source article in every answer
Works in the language your teams speak, with support for 50+ languages
Prescriptive recommendations on or off, at the administrator's discretion
Thumbs up and thumbs down on every answer, so we know exactly what to improve
Available on the web platform and on iOS

Use Your Own AI

Some customers have already standardized on their own AI tool. RetailNext is available as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector, so your data can be queried securely from the AI environment your team already trusts. Access is authenticated against each user's own RetailNext login and scoped to the permissions they already have. It works independently of Pulse AI, and it carries no additional cost.

With thousands of stores across multiple categories, adoption is the real test of any analytics platform. Pulse AI currently in pilot passed it: our in store teams can interrogate their store performance and get an answer, with no training required. Store teams can independently monitor performance and take corrective action when needed. This self-service approach accelerates decision-making and fosters a culture of ownership and continuous improvement at store level.

Nirvani Dhevcharran

Powerful Is Not Enough. IT HAS TO BE TRUSTED.

An AI feature that cannot clear security review is not a feature. We built Pulse AI to pass that review, and we are direct about how it works.

SOC 2 Type II compliantThe same compliance posture that governs the rest of the RetailNext platform governs its AI capabilities.
Your permissions, unchangedPulse AI uses each user's own authentication and access rights. It cannot widen what a person is allowed to see.
Aggregated metrics onlyWhat reaches the AI provider is the aggregated, dashboard-level metrics that already appear in your reports. No raw or sensitive business data is transmitted.
Named provider, enterprise termsPulse AI is powered by Anthropic. We name our provider because you are entitled to know whose model processes your questions, and because if that ever changes you should hear it from us.
Not used to train modelsRetailNext does not permit its third-party AI providers to train their models on customer data without explicit permission.

Company-wide COMMITMENT TO AI.

Our commitment to AI goes beyond a product decision. Every RetailNext employee has access to Anthropic's Claude, supported by a continuous internal training curriculum and a published fluency framework. For you, that means faster answers and quicker turnaround from a team that uses this technology every day rather than only selling it.

AI runs through everything we do: our product, our people, and our process.

Ready to See the INNOVATION IN ACTION?

Talk to our team. We will show you why partnering with RetailNext is an investment in future-proofing your retail business.