Former Tesco and Ahold CEO joins shelf intelligence innovator as growth accelerates
Pensa Systems, a leader in automated retail shelf intelligence, today announced that James McCann has joined its Board of Directors.
McCann is the Founder & CEO of Food Retail Ventures, LLC which has invested in over thirty of the most exciting early-stage companies in food and retail technology. In addition to Pensa Systems, he serves as a board member for companies including Afresh and Fetch Rewards.
“I am delighted to join Pensa’s Board during such an exciting period for both the company and the grocery retail sector,” said McCann. “As a former grocery operator, I understand both the value retailers and their suppliers will derive from Pensa’s highly accurate shelf inventory visibility, and how Pensa’s innovative solution provides them a fast and frictionless path to that value.”
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Prior to becoming an early-stage investor, James spent 20 years in the food and grocery industry and was the CEO of several Tesco businesses in Europe and Asia, Carrefour’s French business and Ahold’s US business.
Pensa provides grocery retailers and CPG brands a highly accurate view of shelf inventory through continuous, automated monitoring of actual shelf conditions. For retailers, Pensa’s patented motion-based computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can replace expensive and inaccurate “gap scanning” for detecting stockouts and prioritizing inventory replenishment. For brands, Pensa provides precise shelf performance indicators including product availability, share, and position to optimize the shelf and boost revenue. Pensa captures an entire grocery aisle in seconds, more than 5 times faster and up to 30 points more accurately than traditional solutions without requiring new hardware, reference images or planograms.
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“We welcome James to our Board of Directors at a key stage in our company’s accelerating growth,” said Richard Schwartz, President and CEO of Pensa Systems. “His guidance will help us unlock huge value for grocery retailers and CPG brands as we continue to scale and expand with our customers.”
