Pretoria-based CohesionX has developed a specialised platform known as VectorMind that is now used by several leading retailers ranging from supermarkets to vehicle sales, outdoor and home improvement chains to fashion. 

“Adoption of AI solutions are at the beginning stages but is fast gaining pace. The global AI market in retail is expected to reach $40,74 billion by 2030 while in South Africa AI in retail reached $170 million in 2024 and it is estimated to climb to $697.9 million in 2030,” says Andre Strauss, CEO of CohesionX. 

“Retail companies who are hesitant to embrace AI risk losing market share and whatever competitive advantage they currently have. AI allows companies to analyse large volumes of data about customer behaviour and their needs, which is transforming how they engage with those customers” he says. 

One such example is a solution developed for vehicle sales company Weelee which offers a new way of searching for cars. Most online sites are built assuming customers know what car brand and specs they want. Weelee’s AI based search, CohesionX's Synaptic Search product, allows for searches of phrases in natural language – e.g. ‘2024 white SUV with low mileage’ or ‘automatic sedan with mileage below 300 000’.  

“Rather than forcing users to adapt to the system, Synaptic adapts to the user, translating human language into multi-layered database queries that enhance the user experience”. 

For a major South African food and clothes retailer, CohesionX runs its Iris data extraction product to make research for the food division's food safety laboratory simpler and faster. The lab receives a continuous stream of emails, each carrying a PDF of lab results from suppliers all over the country and beyond. No two labs use the same format. One embeds images, another prefers dense tables, and a third sends scanned forms with handwritten notes. Hundreds of results pile up every day, and a handful of quality assurance staff are tasked with making sure every item that lands on the shelves meets strict safety and quality thresholds. 

“Iris is a Gen-AI-powered extraction engine designed to make sense of any document. It combines computer vision, advanced language models, and dynamic schema prompts to understand whatever documents are received,” Strauss says. 

Other retail clients who entrust CohesionX with their data, include Wildman, OBARO, Lamb Champs and more. 

Security is, as with all CohesionX technology solutions, of utmost importance as vast volumes of data needs to be protected.  

ISSUED BY: CohesionX 

www.cohesionx.co.za 

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