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The most successful businesses today have invested significantly in purchasing, developing, or adopting smart technologies into their daily operations.
These include location-aware services, which allow companies to:
There are many types of location-based technologies that businesses can choose from. In this article, we take a deeper look at some of the most advanced solutions explaining how they work and what are the benefits for your business or organization in both the short and long term.
Bluetooth is a wireless technology that allows to connect and transmit data between various mobile devices or tags and beacons. Thanks to its properties, it’s commonly used by businesses to monitor the location of their customers or assets.
For example, a healthcare or educational institution can use bluetooth to track the proximity of patients or students to one another in order to better understand if individuals are adhering to social distancing protocols.
In addition, bars, restaurants, and retail outlets within malls can also use bluetooth to identify how close potential customers are to their physical spaces.
Based on this proximity information obtained by dedicated software, companies can target potential clients with advertisements or notifications which aim to draw these customers into visiting their physical sites and enable them to make purchase decisions faster.
Bluetooth is a particularly effective method of monitoring asset location because tags are inexpensive and easily available currently on the market. This also means that bluetooth is a cost-effective way for businesses with limited budgets to obtain location-based analytics and turn it into profit.
Digital fingerprinting technology triangulates signals that smartphone sensors can detect in order to determine the location of the mobile device. Unlike some other location-based services, digital fingerprinting can generate effective results when a user is both indoors and outdoors. It can therefore be used by a range of businesses including places that value indoor navigation and proximity marketing & engagement such as public and recreational spaces, malls, airports, event centers, hospitality outlets and even healthcare and educational campuses.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is commonly used to track small chips or tags that are embedded in a specific object. As a result, this technology is typically used by businesses to track the movement and location of their assets of various types within the organization in real time. This is most commonly deployed where there is a high volume of items that should be tracked and where chokepoints can be used to help track its location or presence.
For example, beach or ski resorts and other public event venues can embed RFID chips in day passes or wristbands which they assign to attendees or visitors. They can then use these to allow access or to better understand what parts of a venue or establishment their customers are frequenting.
Restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and resorts can easily tag any of their assets available within the institution, including sheet or laundry, employee badges, electronic devices, and other appliances of any size or nature.
RFID tags can also enable contactless payments, which can be useful for bars and restaurants, malls, and hospitality venues. Contactless payments can allow businesses to streamline their payment operations and also avoid the spread of germs and viruses.
Ultra Wideband technology is a radio-based technology that primarily uses tags to enable location tracking. More and more, however, new phones are containing UWB chips inside phones so we expect this to be used more and more in the coming years.
UWB can be particularly useful for manufacturing and logistics operations, construction, or in areas where tags can be placed on objects to see how they can move around a site (such as shopping carts in a grocery store). UWB allows businesses to create insightful analytics on what parts of a store customers move to or how long they may dwell with a high degree of accuracy.
WiFi is a particularly useful location-aware technology as it allows businesses that operate indoors to obtain accurate location-based insights, and it’s also a very popular tool among customers.
As a result, businesses such as hospitals, schools, retail outlets in malls, and bars and restaurants, can offer customers free WiFi, and use this connection to track user movements and locations. WiFi is a great option for businesses that have limited resources as most of them purchase a WiFi connection as part of their core operations. Using WiFi, companies can accrue valuable location-based insights without having to invest resources in new tools or software.
One of the best things about Agreefy’s solutions is that it is technology agnostic and never locks you in to using only one type of technology forever.
With no fork lift upgrades, Agreefy’s solutions allow for scalability to the technology of your choice when you want it, including potential new technologies.
Agreefy’s solutions rely on a range of location-based services and technologies that can be easily adopted by most businesses. At the same time, we put an effort to tailor each solution to the particular needs of every industry, and that’s why some of these tools will be better suited for your business than others.
In order to ensure that you are using the services that best align with your company’s needs and constraints, we work with you to assess three key factors which can influence which location-aware services you should be using:
Although location-aware technologies offer a broad range of insights for different businesses and industries, some technologies are better suited for certain industries and organizations. For example, if your business is indoors, you will want to avoid using GPS-based location technologies as these will provide you with less accurate and streamlined insights. In addition, some environments may require longer battery life or the ability to withstand harsh conditions.
When choosing a location-based technology to use, consider whether or not it aligns with the size of your company’s operations. For example, if you are operating a clothing store and you want to scale your asset management operations, then RFID technology can help you tag and track your assets in a cost-effective manner. However, if you only want to keep track of only a few high value items, then perhaps an RFID technology solution is not the most budget-friendly and efficient approach for you.
As you consider which location-based technologies to use, you dedicate a specific budget to allocate on certain solutions. Many location-aware services require businesses to integrate, maintain, and upgrade or replace certain tools or components. During the interview process, we explain all the requirements of a particular technology, with pros and cons for your business.
Read more on Agreefy’s solutions, or contact us to discuss specific needs of your business.
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