Business Problem
Smartphones are at the nexus of consumers’ daily lives. This changes the traditional retailer-consumer paradigm: now, shoppers use their phones to read product reviews, compare prices, and otherwise remain informed about products before they step into a store to make their purchase. In order to stay relevant to the 21st century consumer, retailers must offer exceptional, consistent shopping experiences to consumers. Going forward, this makes technologies which are able to provide information about the behavior, demographic profile and location tracking of consumers increasingly valuable.
Add big data and connected sensors into the mix, and the potential for enhancing the in-store shopping experience increases significantly. These two technologies will augment the shopping experience by phasing out GPS technology which does not accurately depict the movement of consumers and replacing it with sophisticated micro locational and reporting technologies.
Solution
SAP Startup Focus member Infonomi addresses the market need by leveraging big data, micro location services and real time predictive modeling in its product Kurbi.
The Kurbi framework is a combination of beacons that are deployed in-store and mobile application downloaded by both retailers and shoppers which performs a variety of tasks:
- Pinpoints the locations of certain kinds of displays and exhibits, helping consumers find them more easily.
- Helps retailers better understand consumer in-store shopping patterns and traffic flows, so that they can lay out the space more effectively.
- Enables a more seamless checkout experience by accepting mobile payments and integrating the retailer’s loyalty program.
- Improves indoor mapping, which at this point GPS does not do a good job of.
Increasingly, retailers seek deep consumer insight, including consumer demographics like age, race, level of education, as well as how long customers linger in certain areas of the store. When shoppers sign up for the Kurbi app, they provide their profile information through email registration or by allowing the app access to LinkedIn and Facebook. According to the unique profile that is created for a user, a user receives coupons, promotion campaigns and navigation directing them to particular products. Retailers are able to use this information to drive and direct traffic by understanding which areas see high levels of activity and socialization and which do not.
SAP HANA + Infonomi
Infonomi was drawn to the SAP HANA technology as Kurbi’s features necessitated a high performance database, web service and time-critical solution that utilized predictive analytics. In order to record the cumulative footprint of all users and provide real-time product suggestions and promotions based on billions of records, SAP HANA became the obvious choice. In addition, the security and reliability of the SAP HANA platform ensures that the integrity of the technology remains intact, especially with sensitive consumer information being extracted on a regular basis.
Infonomi showcased its technology during the SAP Forum event in its headquarters Istanbul, Turkey. At the 1,000 + person venue, Infonomi installed 100 of its beacons to illustrate the movement of the attendees through various heat maps.
The goal of the project was to create instant visualizations of individual movements, information which could ultimately be used to unlock new relationships between customers and retailers.
To date, 1,000 users have installed and opened the Kurbi app. With several POC pilot studies underway with potential customers, 2015 holds promise for both Infonomi and its target customers.
Interested to learn more? Watch the Infonomi demo video below.
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