Software helps keep an eye on shoppers

Verint Systems Inc., a Melville-based video analytics software maker, has adapted its technology for the retail store marketplace.

Using video feeds from store surveillance cameras, Verint's software can analyze customer traffic, cash register lines, patterns of shoppers' movements through the aisles, and other visual data.

It also can help create highly accurate shopper volume measurements and compute customer waiting time at the register, allowing schedulers to improve staffing decisions, Verint says.

Verint's global marketing chief for the software, Debjit Das, said the company took its video analytics expertise, which is in wide use in other corporate and commercial settings, and applied it to the consumer retail shopping model.

Verint's goal, Das said, is to "provide retail organizations with simple, relevant and actionable business metrics that are otherwise hard to obtain real data on."

The software, called Nextiva Video Business Intelligence, can network the video analysis, linking individual retail outlets with corporate headquarters for executive decision-making.

It is "designed to help forward-thinking retail organizations capture and analyze shopper movement patterns to increase conversion rates and improve operational efficiency," Verint said this week in announcing the newly adapted software.

The Verint system uses video "extracted from existing surveillance cameras."