Public Funding for Reio One Ltd

The pricing and monopoly power of online platforms such as Amazon and eBay means that online consumer spend is being directed to these platforms, which extract significant pricing power from merchants. For example, 30% of the transaction price are typically Amazon fees, and further Amazon sponsored word advertising frequently pushes costs above 100% of the purchase price, meaning that the 65% shelf-price of retail is eclipsed by the overall cost of selling on Amazon. Sites such as Shopify enable DIY online eCommerce stores to be created, but unlike a well positioned store on the high street, getting footfall requires significant advertising and marketing spend. Given the optimisation algorithms, typically the customers that pay the most, end up on top of the rankings, those with the biggest online footprint, favouring those with large budgets, such as large companies. Small retailers are increasingly being squeezed out of the market as more retail spend goes online. During lockdown, these were the companies that suffered most from the sudden lack of footfall. Yet, these shops provide a vital component of community life and also have many other competitive advantages, such as local produce, convenience, instant store pick up, delivery within the hour using Deliveroo or other delivery. However, to capitalise on these benefits, consumers have to be able to search for local products. Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree do this for private sellers of all types of wares, but this is not professional and if someone is looking for a new Dyson, just as searching for a new car on Autotrader. We have search for real estate on Zoopla, with filters for max price, or number of rooms. These are all parameters and these parameters are missing when looking for products online. Both product search and the ability for retailers to list their items, not on Amazon or eBay, but on their own websites or simply enable a purchase through a rudimentary online inventory page are not available. This means online consumer spend goes to the giants, whereas the Dyson is also stocked at Joe's Hardware, the consumer traffic will go to Amazon unless Joe's Hardware has a website and has spent significant amount on marketing ads, and generating content to enable it to go higher on Google. The customer acquisition cost for Joe's Hardware, and the fact that it is a small retailer, means it cannot compete with Amazon. That is, unless, ProductSearch enables the searching of its inventory for availability and with filters. The Dyson at Joe's Hardware may be more expensive marginally, but the ability to buy local means a consumer may pay a little extra for delivery within the hour. There is a reason the 'last mile delivery' is the most expensive and couriers to Amazon have been trying to work out how to reduce costs and maintain smaller local hubs. These hubs essentially are our retail stores on the high streets, and with ProductSearch, we'll re-direct online revenue from large platforms like Amazon to local shop websites and inventory listings.

Shift management is complex and is subject to many constraints and interdependencies. Shift working is utilised across industries as large as the NHS to the retail, military, government, and many other sectors. Current solutions only provide tools to place shifts on calendars; they do not address the complexities directly, instead relying on human intervention to provide the decision-making and management components e.g. moving a shift around. We intend to solve for shift working patterns by applying a linear optimisation model, similar to how the travelling salesman problem was used to solve distance travelled by a sales rep and hence massively reduce carbon footprint and cost to the employer, our project will create software that combines a mathematical approach that is impartial, eliminates subconscious biases, uses machine learning algorithms (autoML) and live data to dynamically update the linear optimisation model, enabling AI-generated solutions to the shift scheduling problem. The project will thus enable software to replace excel and other rudimentary gut feel rota schedules where thousands of people are involved, enable software processes to interact to request shift changes, update hours, make more or fewer hours available, switch shifts, and deploy the optimal staff combinations for the best business outcomes. Replacing the person responsible for shift scheduling with an AI-generated solutions will be akin to removing the taxi dispatcher, the way that Uber has done with technology. Anticipated benefits from the project include greater efficiency and performance; reduced overheads; reduced stress and anxiety; improved service for customers and therefore improvements in reputation; and increased fairness (eliminating subconscious bias, for example).