You can’t see it, but it is right there…

Sco-to-ma

/ske tome/

Noun

def. A partial blind spot in an otherwise normal visual field.

Have you ever looked for something and found it was right in front of you? Scientists call this phenomenon a scotoma. The reason scotomas happen is a result of a predisposed belief. Belief we already know what an item looks like – its color, size, shape. Our emotional state can also be a factor – whether we’re anxious, distracted, etc. We all know what it feels like to find something that was so obviously right in front of us.

The behavior of your guests, clients (and now, given COVID-19, your employees) is driving your organization’s success or failure, but until now, you just couldn’t see or access it. It is physically impossible for managers and associates to see all traffic and individual behavior inside your property. But what if you could? What would that mean to your business’ ability to operate, merchandise, service, and safely meet consumer’s needs and expectations?

THE PROOF IS IN THE DATA

Data serves as the foundation of an ever-increasing knowledge base and is now at the core of many, if not most, business decisions. The challenge is gaining access to this data, analyzing and creating actionable insights and ultimately putting it in the right hands within the organization to most safely maximize operational potential.

The data necessary to achieve such “nirvana” contains real-time:

• People counts
• Locations
• Dwell times

This is the scotoma! The data is there, yet has been unavailable until recent technological infrastructure and platform advancements.

Advanced WiFi access points available today are able to “see” wireless devices in a space, capture the unique wireless device identifier, and detect where that wireless device is within the overall space it resides. Unfortunately this data is stored in a location that only IT can access, and worst of all, in a format that is unusable for most organizations to consume.

The data collected by the advanced access point is an absolute goldmine, containing (to name just a few):

• wireless device unique ID
• device hardware
• device operating system
• location of device with time specified

From this data, the application of simple math, analytics, and even artificial intelligence is used to gain insights and make connections within a plethora of data:

Simple Math

• new vs returning people
• new and returning people counts by hour/day/week/month/quarter
• new and returning people dwell time by hour/day/week/month/quarter

Analytics

• people pathing (typical route people go in your environment)
• people heat map (where do they spend most of their time)
• people segmentation
• recency, frequency, dwell scoring by new and returning

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

• Treatment by segment Service
• Offers
• Communications

While this data has been unavailable in the past, most organizations are constantly using qualitative, quantitative (based on aggregated and old data), and general reasoning to make decisions. It is now possible to gain access to individual behavioral data to operate safely and continue to seek improvement in business outcomes.

LTAnalytics is a location-based analytics and smartphone communication platform built by industry leaders in predictive analytics and software development. Using this platform along with a WiFi network powers real-time analysis of every square foot of your property.

LTAnalytics developed this platform to help the experiential marketing, event, hospitaily and retail industries.

The mechanics of hyper-targeted marketing and communication are akin. Both require defining communication/messaging objectives, being able to identify your target audience, deliver timely and relevant messaging, determining which channel to deliver what message, motivate the them to take action, track activity and continuously monitor information flow.

Our system can be instrumental in leveraging location-based data and real-time machine learning to provide insights into the movement of people through physical environments. We can do this by using our mobile solutions and existing WiFi networks to quickly help monitor population gatherings and traffic patterns and send relevant messages to managers or subscribed “network” participants. Management can be notified if large gatherings are happening and communication via text or email sent to warn and disperse as needed.

Learn more at LTAnalytics.io.