Company Name: Trendwise
Announcement Date: 17/08/2016
Announcement Category: Product launch/update
Announcement Content:
What is WCD?
Technology is allowing everything to be more easily and more precisely measured. The attraction of the internet for many companies and marketers is that the journey of the customer or user is easily tracked, you know where they came from, you know if they linger and where they go and there are mechanisms that allow you to interact, corresponded, transact. This accountability delivers a sense of security and a stronger sense of value, because for what is measured is better believed and measurement forms the basis for better decisions.
Measurement in the online world is abundant. The real world is a little different but that is changing with the evolution of the digital technology, the Internet of things, geo positioning and the rise of the smart phone. Data about the movement of people is becoming more common, addressable and more easy to collate, mix and interpret. The fusion of data collected over a spread of data collection points and from smart phones is now allowing businesses to build profiles of people and groups in the real world. This data doesn’t really have a generic name, but we call it wide cast data or WCD.
WCD collects data on the movement of people and builds profiles on those people on a non attributed basis by tracking where they go and combining that movement with every day and often very public data. WCD can therefore map the movement of people against where they have been, events, census figures, crime hotspots, weather, promotions if you are an advertiser, or any other public or proprietary data to build a better understanding of clientele, better predict outcomes and better resource for those outcomes.
Why will it matter?
Many decisions in the real world, and particularly around the movement of people are based on judgement, not statistics. For example in determining what the foot traffic is past a shop, a landlord will provide you with an educated guess, redacted from census information or a survey of manual clicks for two hours from yester year. Alternatively, assessing the impact of a road closure on traffic will be based on a similar anecdotal response as will the estimation of a crowd a festival on a sunny day instead of a raining day.
WCD will help you better measure, prioritise, optimise and predict the outcome. Data collected through the internet of things (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth are common opt in collection mechanisms, there are others like Trendwise that collect passively, and therefore numerically collect more people movements) can be collated with other data, so that a business will know that the probability of a sunny day, during school holidays when the football is playing will reduce or increase footfall in their area by 30% and plan accordingly. Equally, an airport operator can better prioritise staffing at check in based on data that might include weather, where people might be travelling from for that flight, news reports on weather or traffic delays. This is powerful because WCD will help through better measurement, businesses and governments, (and government bodies like the police) prioritise and optimise expenditure because they can better predict outcomes.
Measurement through WCD will be a new management tool, first and foremost it brings knowledge, but immediately it will bring savings because with WCD you can plan with knowledge.
An example of WCD usage
Imagine you are a restaurant business, wanting to roll out a network of franchises. You want to ensure that each franchisee has an economically viable area allocated to it, the franchise premises are located in streets likely to succeed and you also need another mechanism to check the turnover of a franchise, because your fees are based on a percentage of turnover. Finally, you want to provide a service to your franchisees because you know for them it is both a livelihood and an investment, and that the more value you create for them the more value you will create for yourself.
WCD data will:
- Identify the best places for traffic in a street, and so where best to lease a premises
- Understand the potential clientele in the area and their habits
- Know who is in the area, where they visit, what they do (and don’t do)
- Understand changes in behaviour
- Measure visitation, its frequency, duration and bounce
- Measure the impact of promotions on sales
- Help optimise staffing and rostering at the location and over time what supplies might be needed on what day
This knowledge will protect both franchisor and franchisee and in due diligence on the sale of a franchise would be obvious information to provide and share with any buyer or investor.
WCD in the DNA of this kind of business will increase its value.
How can you start getting WCD?
WCD needs data but it also needs a platform to analyse and present it.
The data is very broadly collected in three parts:
- Collection points that use beacon/ sensor technology. The comprehensiveness of data collected will depend on the technology used. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are widely used, but collect 20 odd per cent of traffic, other technology like Trendwise, can collect up to 85% of traffic. Beacons collect the movement of people and track them as an “asset”.
- Proprietary data from you, the client. This data might be sales at a cash register through the day, staff employment at a premise, a marketing schedule or opening and closing times. The input is as diverse as you need it to be.
- Public data. This can cover the obvious, weather, events, census figures, other business or school locations, the intermittent such as a road closure or polling day and the particular such as a festive day for a religious group or a visiting rock band at an event
The combination of this data will build profiles of the movement in an area and as people move around, the data combinations will provide information on behaviours, preferences and profiles by individual. The platform remains the key, because it presents the data in a way it can be used, presented and exported. At Trendwise this data is presented pictorially and numerically and modelling allows clients to undertake sensitivity/scenario analysis.
Getting started is easy and an investment of as little as $50,000 per annum in the franchise example given above, will provide a return on investment within months. WCD is a valuable management tool, it has arrived and you will be seeing a lot more of it in a dictionary near you.
To find out more, contact us at [email protected] or (08) 6188 8111.
Announcement URL: http://trendwise.co/wide-cast-data-coming-dictionary-near/
About Trendwise:
Trendwise brings internet-style visitor analytics to the physical world.
Trendwise allows business owners to optimise customer engagement, conversion and loyalty by understanding exactly when, where and how visitors interact with their physical locations.
Go to Company Profile for: Trendwise
Announcement Contact: [email protected]
