Crowd Insider
When you have important decisions to make, it’s a good idea to focus on the facts rather than simply listening to your gut feeling. But it’s not always easy to get your hands on the facts. Swisscom Broadcast’s sensor-based cloud solution delivers precise answers. When it comes to safety and profitability, movement patterns and footfall data are invaluable.
These days, many companies have extensive data from their online channels. Which offers were viewed? How long was the dwell time? What was the approximate age of the potential customer? However, it is difficult to draw similar conclusions from a company’s physical ecosystem. But this can be easily remedied: with Crowd Insider from Swisscom Broadcast. Various sensors, installed in a shop or an event location for instance, count the number of customers entering the space. They can even measure their dwell time and foot traffic patterns.
Daniel Gasser, Head of Secure & Intelligent Spaces at Swisscom Broadcast, is well versed in the solution’s benefits: “If shop managers are aware of the products customers spend longer on and the ones they ignore, they can adjust their offers accordingly. Or they can rearrange their display areas so that the whole store is easily accessible to customers.” Furthermore, the sensor information can be enriched with POS data to obtain the coefficient of frequency/sales, for instance. It is easy to check the effectiveness of campaigns, point-of-sale promotions and specific retail activities using footfall data and dwell time.
“However, it’s about much more than just visualising customer flows,” explains Daniel Gasser. For many managers, live data is particularly useful. It gives information about what is currently happening and where, or how many people are in a certain location. The solution can trigger automatic notifications to specific individuals or authorities when defined numbers or limits are exceeded. For example, employees receive an automated message if a shelf is empty and needs restocking. “People who work with data are also better prepared for emergencies,” says Daniel Gasser. Data can show which emergency exits and escape routes are opened as a priority during an evacuation and where emergency vehicles might be needed. “Anyone who wants to rely on facts rather than guesswork should consider a system like this.”
Crowd Insider also enables managers to improve their processes and increase efficiency. Maintenance and waste disposal work can be done at the exact times when there are very few customers in the store. The cleaning team is only called out when a certain number of people have been in an area or is asked to clean more frequently at the busiest entrances – because first impressions count.
