RS Implements GroupBy's eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Retail

GroupBy Inc. today announces that RS, a global provider of product and service solutions for industrial customers, has implemented its AI-first eCommerce Search and Product Discovery platform powered by Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Retail across their EMEA and APAC sites. This partnership is revolutionizing and modernizing RS’ digital experience by bringing the power of AI to its website search and product discovery buyer journey providing online shoppers with faster and more relevant search results.

With the implementation of GroupBy’s Product Discovery Platform, powered by Google Cloud's next-generation search engine, RS is leading the way with this type of technology in the industrial manufacturing space. The search engine that powers GroupBy’s platform leverages Google’s years of experience delivering personalized content across its flagship properties, such as Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube. Trained on significantly more data than traditional legacy systems, the state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) possess a superior understanding of user intent and context. As such, RS can now deliver relevant, buyable, and personalized search results optimized for revenue for long-tail and broad search queries, including niche industry terms, which compromise the vast majority of RS’ search traffic. This AI-led search optimization enables RS to automatically boost cold-start products from new brands and help to spotlight products from smaller brands, ensuring that the most relevant products are showcased for each search query.

Since switching to GroupBy’s AI-first search and product discovery platform, RS has seen a shift in its merchandising processes from a rule-based to a revenue-generating operation. The AI functionality has enabled the company to virtually eliminate the use of more than 30,000 search rules to none, significantly improving productivity by more than 60%. By providing RS with a tool that enables them to strike a perfect balance between AI-led optimization and manual curation, their internal merchandising teams can now focus more on campaign creation, inventory visibility, and implementation of new technologies that will propel them to further heights.

“The results we have seen from GroupBy’s Product Discovery platform have exceeded our expectations,” says Hannah Foley, VP of Digital Products & Platforms with RS. “Our digital channels are critical to our success, and that of our customers in their procurement activities. Product discovery has to be seamless and intuitive to make it easy to do business with RS. GroupBy’s AI-first platform has eliminated our dependence on manual rules, allowing us to deliver a faster and more accurate search experience while freeing our team to focus on more data-driven revenue-generating activities.”

The successes that RS has seen with the implementation of the GroupBy Search and Product Discovery Platform, coupled with strong internationalization capabilities, driven in part by Google’s powerful translation abilities, have prompted RS to expand the integration of the search platform to additional APAC markets for roll out in the near future. This technology allows RS to seamlessly handle multilingual content, delivering relevant search results for non-English queries.

“We’re thrilled that RS has chosen to lead the way for B2B retailers,” says GroupBy CEO Roland Gossage. “GroupBy’s AI-first platform is the key to bridging the gap between merchant and consumer, especially for complex B2B use cases. GroupBy’s platform strikes the perfect balance between AI and manual control, which has allowed RS to deliver an online search experience tailored to B2B buyers while also helping to reduce the number of null searches and maximizing the capabilities and talents of their team.”

The GroupBy Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Vertex AI Search for Retail has made it possible for customers like RS to take advantage of Google Cloud’s next-generation search engine, including GroupBy’s all-in-one platform containing all vital eCommerce search and product discovery functions – data enrichment, search and recommendations, merchandising, and analytics and reporting. This platform easily handles key B2B eCommerce search use cases, such as customer-specific availability and pricing, automatic unit conversion, and part number search, for vast product catalogs containing millions of products – bridging the gap between buyer and merchant.

GroupBy executives will be present at ShopTalk 2024 at booth #318. To schedule a meeting, contact sales@groupbyinc.com.

ABOUT RS GROUP PLC

RS Group plc provides product and service solutions that help our customers design, build, maintain, repair and operate industrial equipment and operations, safely and sustainably. We stock more than 750,000 industrial and electronic products, sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers, and provide a wide range of product and service solutions to 1.1 million customers.

We support customers across the product lifecycle, whether via innovation and technical support at the design phase, improving time to market and productivity at the build phase, or reducing purchasing costs and optimizing inventory in the maintenance, repair and operation phase. We offer our customers tailored product and service propositions that are essential for the successful operation of their businesses and help them save time and money.

RS Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with stock ticker RS1 and in the year ended 31 March 2023 reported revenue of £2,982 million.

For more information, please visit the website at www.rsgroup.com.

About GroupBy Inc.

Founded in 2013, GroupBy is an eCommerce Search and Product Discovery SaaS technology provider that powers some of the largest B2B and B2C brands. GroupBy’s AI-first composable platform is bringing next-generation search technology to retailers worldwide, helping to bridge the gap between consumer and merchant. Powered by Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Retail, the platform consists of Data Enrichment, Search and Recommendations, Merchandising, and Analytics and Reporting providing eCommerce merchants with access to a powerhouse of products and services designed to enhance the digital customer experience. Built on AI fundamentals, the GroupBy platform is transforming eCommerce merchandising from rule-based to revenue-generating, optimizing productivity and efficiencies, and reducing time to market - allowing retailers, wholesalers and distributors to focus on business strategic initiatives that drive revenue. To learn more about how GroupBy is shaping the future of eCommerce visit www.groupbyinc.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

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