The average grocery store has 65 to 80% inventory accuracy. One in 10 products is out of stock at any moment. For an industry operating on razor-thin margins and competing against digital-native challengers, that data gap is existential.
In this episode, Kevin Johnson, CEO of Focal Systems, sits down with Joseph to explore how his team is using computer vision, data streaming, and stateful stream processing to close that gap at scale.
Kevin walks through how Focal moved from brittle, homegrown pipelines to a fully managed streaming platform—unlocking new use cases including virtual store walk, planogram compliance, and real-time theft detection—all without the operational overhead of managing infrastructure.
You’ll Learn: How Focal Systems uses stateful stream processing with Apache Flink® to convert millions of shelf images into real-time store actions Why homegrown data pipelines fail at scale—and how managed infrastructure freed Focal’s engineers to focus on innovation How real-time data unlocked unplanned use cases, from virtual store walk to computer-vision-driven theft detection
