Central Retail in Vietnam accelerates retail automation with akaBot

Owing to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the trend for multi-channel shopping has continuously been on the steady rise, opening up more opportunities for the retail industry. According to the “Vietnam Insight Ebook 2021” report by Kantar, the revenue growth rate for the in-home fast-moving consumer goods (in-home FMCG) industry in four cities (Hanoi, TP.HCM, Đa Nang, Can Tho) has increased by 6,4% and 8,7% for rural area compared to 2020.

Along with this multi-channel shopping trend, robots and business process automation applications, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF - 2018), might be able to take over half of human jobs by 2025. Automation is considered as an optimal solution for businesses to speed up operations, help save cost, increase efficiency, maintain business continuity, and optimize customer experiences. 

Catching up with the digital transformation waves, Central Retail Vietnam (CRV) – a retail chain with over 260 shops, supermarkets, and 38 commercial centers, focuses on promoting technology application to improve efficiency, standardize processes, develop omni-channel

According to a CRV representative, just one year ago, the company implemented automation of the entire retail business process base on akaBot – FPT Software’s business process automation platform. After a year of operation, the application of virtual robot of akaBot for the automation processes of matching supplier invoices with the goods tracking system helped CRV’s accounting and financing department reduce operational time by 50%. Invoice processing speed also doubled compared to manual processing as before, corresponding to 1.8 million invoices/year. Not only do they help increase efficiency and save time, akaBot’s virtual robots also help CRV to save 5-10 billion VND in operational costs/year, thus optimizing profits and standardizing procedure. 

Mrs. Trần Thị Hồng Nhan – Head of CRV’s Accounting and Financing department shared: “Thanks to the positive results, CRV can easily and proactively approach to our business expansion strategies, and bolster our operation on all of the commercial channels. With the time saved, CRV will work on our customer retention values, improve our service quality and the customer’s shopping experience.”

Entering Vietnam since 2012, Central Retail has been constantly expanding their store chains and diversifying their product lineup in three main categories: food retail, non-goods products, and commercial centers. CRV are currently operating a network of stores, supermarkets and commercial centers with a total retail area of up to 1,000,000 m2; serving more than 175,000 customers every day.

With the RPA technology as its core, akaBot is capable of integrating AI (artificial intelligence) and OCR (optical character recognition) to construct an comprehensive smart automation solution, without intruding on the current IT systems. akaBot is a part of the product and service of Made by FPT ecosystem, and one of the key spearheading growth motivations in the long run, while at the same time,  contribute to promoting the development of the digital economy, for a stalwart Vietnam with its own place on the global technological map. akaBot’s solutions can be applied to a wide array of fields such as banking, retailing, manufacturing, logistics, etc.. serving more than 50 major clients and corporations across 13 countries.

This solution by FPT Software had also earned them many accolades worldwide, with one of which being the Top Process Automation award by The Asian Banker Vietnam 2021 in last May, and being listed as a part of the Gartner Organization’s Peer Insights catalogue along with 20 leading global companies such as UIPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism.