SFA and Image Recognition

Do you remember those days when the IR market was just taking off? Back then, IR vendors acquired no more than 20-40 customers. SFA (sales force automation) companies sensed the profit right away and began negotiating over integrations to upsell IR to their clients.Yet, as the IR was growing in popularity, Trax and Planorama (the IR pioneers) wanted to consolidate the market. SFA vendors, in turn, aimed to control both customers and cashflow.So they started:

1. Trying to develop their own IR solutions. However it wasn’t a success. Customers were skeptical of the SFA’s capabilities, and the R&D costs were way too high - millions of dollars without any guarantee.
2. Purchasing IR vendors. That worked better. Yet, there weren’t many purely SaaS vendors - their IR soft required people in the loop (1st generation IR) and was less efficient and cost-effective.

Hence, if you work for FMCG and your SFA doesn’t offer on-device or real-time only recognition - it’s the first generation IR that requires people on the loop and prevents you from using IR to the fullest.