How Small Businesses Can Utilize People Counting Solutions?

The small businesses and medium size enterprises are always the lifeline of any economy. Here in UAE the SMEs account for 94% of the total operations and generate 60% of the GDP. That shows the small and medium size businesses are flourishing in the country. The small businesses are also important for a country as they are majorly responsible for producing the workforce for the country. The UAE government is very supportive for SMEs and have favorable policies for small and local businesses which is one of the main reason of such a staggering growth. The 73% of the SMEs in the country operate in retail and wholesale sector according to The United Arab Emirates’ Government Portal. The Dubai and in fact the entire UAE is a very favorable market for the small businesses operating in the retail sector. This means there is a lot of room to grow which also means that the market would be very competitive. The favorable market conditions always attract more investors which raise the competition. Small businesses can beat the competition by improving the customer experience and happiness and by making smart strategies for their sales and marketing campaigns.

How Small Businesses Can Utilize People Counting Solutions?

The retail industry has become very complex over the time, the market trends have been changed, the customer behavior and expectations got changed, the e-Commerce industry is rapidly growing in the UAE and the competition is also increasing day by day. This demand retail businesses to find innovative ways to improve the customer experience, raise customer satisfaction, upgrade their sales and marketing strategies and take a proactive approach to manage their operations. The modern age business environment is heavily digitalized and driven by analytical data. Businesses who made informed decisions tend to have higher success rate than the businesses who are still following the traditional methods to operate. The people counting solution is a very powerful analytical tool which can make a huge difference and provide businesses with enough data and information at which they can form innovative strategies and improve their productivity and performance to yield higher profitability. In this blog we will discuss what a people counting solution is and how it can be a game changer for small businesses.

How Small Businesses Can Utilize People Counting Solutions?

What is a People Counting Solution?

The people counting solution is basically a technological solution to count the footfall at any venue. The people counting technology was introduced by the retail sector, as it is very important for the businesses to understand the customer behavior and footfall counts. The beginning of the people counting solution was manual but sooner technology is added to improve the efficiency. The earlier people counting solutions were based on laser light or infrared sensors, which were installed at the entrances of the retail store. As soon as someone enters the continuity of the laser light disrupted which indicates one entry in the store. However, these sensors were not accurate enough. Later on as the technology progressed, we witnessed more and much better people counting sensing technologies such as ultrasonic sensors, infrared cameras with higher resolution and a few other. The modern day people counting system is an AI (artificial intelligence) powered smart software based system which can take the CCTV camera feeds as inputs and process the video in real-time to compute the footfall with higher accuracy. It not only calculate the footfall but it also collects a wealth of valuable analytical data which can help retail businesses to improve their operations, sales and marketing tactics.

What is a People Counting Solution?

What are the Benefits of People Counting Solution for Small Businesses?

For any small business or medium size retail outlet the customer happiness is the top priority. They are eager to find ways to improve customer experience and service quality at their retail stores. Another bigger problem that most retail stores and small businesses face is the customer churn rate. It is majorly due to the long waiting lines and the second reason is people can’t easily navigate within the premises to reach to the right product they need. All these factors cause unhappiness and stress among your customers. If customers failed to find the relevant product, or if they will have to wait for long at the counters, they are most likely to avoid such business in future. Which could deprive you from valuable sales and revenue. The retail stores and small businesses must understand the natural people flow within their premises and they need to understand the behavior and needs of preferences of the customers in order to cater their needs and expectations. In this blog we will discuss how a modern people counting solution can help retail sector and small businesses to deal with the most common and damaging problems they face.

What are the Benefits of People Counting Solution for Small Businesses?

People Counting Solution Accurately Calculates Customer Footfall

The customer footfall data is very important it provide small businesses a chance to relate it with their sales and understand the impact of strategies and actions they are taking to improve the operations of the business. The traditional people counting solutions are not accurate, they can get overwhelmed easily when the footfall increases and they provide very limited data. However, a modern AI (artificial intelligence) based people counting solution is far more accurate and it can capture tons of other details which help small businesses to based their strategies and planning upon accurate analytical data and matrices. The people counting solution is based on smart image processing algorithms which can integrate with any CCTV camera feeds and process the video input in real-time to collect a wealth of analytical data and count footfall with almost 99% of accuracy. The smart image processing and object identification algorithms can accurately distinguishes between human and non-human objects. Moreover the modern AI based people counting solution can also identify the gender and age group of the customers with high accuracy. This data is very helpful in planning and strategy making processes.

People Counting Solution Accurately Calculates Customer Footfall

People Counting Solution Offers Heat Map Analysis

One of the biggest advantage of the modern people counting system is its heat amp analysis. The AI based algorithms process the CCTV camera feed in real-time. This enables the system to track the movements of the customers within the premises. The smart software engine is capable of monitoring the customer flow all the time and it can process it into analytical data which can be overlapped on a 2D/3D floor plan to show visual representation of the customer flow with standard heat map color code, where the red shows the most traffic and the blue shows the least traffic or no traffic. This might sound complicated but the retail store manager or branch manager can understand the entire customers flow with just one glance on the dashboard. Tracking the customer movement within the premises allow the branch managers to clearly understand which areas are the most visited and which areas failed to attract customers. This allow them to further analyze the reasons of customer attraction and help them build strategies to maximize the customer interest throughout the store and help them boost sales.

People Counting Solution Offers Heat Map Analysis

People Counting Solution Monitor Customer Dwell Time

The customer dwell time is a measurement of time spend by any customer in a particular area. The customer dwell time monitoring is crucial for the small businesses and retails stores. It help management understand where customers like to spend more time and which areas or zones of their premises are more captivating than others. The people counting solution has in-built AI based smart image processing and object tracking algorithms which enables it to detect the movements of the customers within the premises and also enable it to accurately calculate the dwell time of the customers in any particular region. The customer dwell time data can also be displayed in visual representation which makes it more understandable. The people counting solution can show the customer dwell time data on the 2D/3D floor plan of the business premises. This data help businesses understand how customers are responding to different products, brands, offers, and inventory management strategies. This understanding enable businesses to rectify problems and fine tune their strategies to maximize the outcome.

People Counting Solution Monitor Customer Dwell Time

People Counting Solution Help Improving the Marketing Outcome

For any small business or retail store the marketing is a key factor that contributes to its success. Businesses tend to utilize several different marketing channels along with in-store marketing techniques to boost the revenue. For example a small business have installed a new digital signage which is running adverts, promotions and offers to attract more customers. With the help of people counting system the management can understand how effective that move was. They can compare the footfall before and after installing the signage. Furthermore if they have installed a signage inside the store to attract customers to particular areas, the heat map can help them understand its effectiveness. Similarly businesses also use digital marketing and other traditional marketing techniques to increase the footfall. For example the businesses started a digital marketing campaign and they are monitoring the campaign analytics as well as the footfall, they can easily understand the effectiveness of the campaign. The people counting solution can provide highly accurate data which help businesses maximize the outcome of their marketing campaigns.

People Counting Solution Help Improving the Marketing Outcome

People Counting Solution Help Understanding Customer Persona

For any business it is extremely important to understand who their customers are? What they like? What they don’t like? What they expect from the business? And so on. The customer persona by definition means a profile or characterization of a particular user group. For example, all males from the age of 20 to 40 preferred to buy a particular shoe type. That is a persona or a group who is buying a particular shoe type and they are also most likely to buy more similar shoe designs in future. That is just an example, for a small business or retail store the customer persona is a much deeper understanding of customers, their behavior, purchase pattern and more. The people counting solution is based or highly advanced AI based image processing algorithms which allow it to accurately identify the gender of the customers and visitors along with their age group. It can easily distinguishes between kids, young adults and elderly people. This information help small businesses and retails stores to understand the behavior, preferences and purchase patters of different customer groups and enable them to target each group differently to produce better results.

People Counting Solution Help Understanding Customer Persona

People Counting Solution Help Improving Employee Performance

Another great advantage of the people counting solution is that it can also track and monitor employee performance. For any small business or retail store the employee performance and better resource planning is crucial. The employee happiness and satisfaction depends on employee performance. That is why the management is always eager to improve it. The people counting system can identify the employees and it can distinguishes between the employee and other visitors/customers. This allow it to compile separate analytical reports and data for the employees. It can track their movements, it can accurately record their dwell time at any location in store and it can generate a full heat map of their entire movements of the day. Such information help the management to understand how the employees are behaving, where they are spending more time, how they were handling different levels of footfall and much more. Thus the management can build a better resource planning strategy to maximize the employee performance and engagement.

People Counting Solution Help Improving Employee Performance

People Counting Solution Offers Centralized Management

Most of the small businesses and retail stores can have several branches at several different locations. However, the top management usually resides at the head-office or main branch. The people counting solution offer centralized management which enables the businesses to connect all the branches and monitor the real-time data at a centralized location, whether the head-office or main branch. This help the higher management to get quick updates about any branch and allow them to take instant actions to improve the performance. Furthermore the centralized management also allow businesses to integrate the people counting solution with other third-party system, business tools or ERP solutions. This is achieved using secure APIs which enable the people counting solution to communicate with the other system and send or receive data to and from that system. This allow the people counting solution to provide analytical data to other systems. For example, if the business is using an ERP and they want to have all the data at the ERP, they can have it by integrating the people counting system with the ERP via API integration methods. This improve management’s visibility, vision, control and management capabilities.

People Counting Solution Offers Centralized Management

Conclusion

Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the small businesses and retail sector is rapidly growing which is good for businesses, but the rapid growth also caused tougher competition. Now a days the customers have tons of options, if a small business or retail store failed to satisfy them then the customers will leave and they might never come back. That is why it is extremely important that the business cater to their needs. For that businesses need to gather important business intelligence data which can provide them better understanding of the customer behavior, customer journey, their inventory management strategy, employee performance and other matrices. The people counting solution is a best companion for small businesses and retail stores. It can accurately measure the footfall count, it provides heat map analysis, it can track customer journey and movement within the premises and it can also monitor employees. The data gathered from a people counting solution helps improving strategies and management which results in better customer experience and efficient operation.

RSI Concepts is a leading people counting solution provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you deploy a highly cost-efficient and customized people counting solution at your business, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

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