The Unwritten Contract: New Normal, New Responsibilities

As the world learns to function alongside the COVID-19 virus, retailers and customers alike have to adjust to new ways to stay safe and return to a normal life; one without lockdowns and other harsh restrictions.

With the shift towards online shopping in recent years, retailers have to fight hard to continue to provide shoppers with good reason to visit their physical stores.

COVID has only served to exacerbate this, with a general customer reluctance to frequent public spaces for fear of infection and every good reason NOT to visit physical stores.

Post Covid, society effectively has a kind of mutual obligation or “unwritten contract” as customers regain confidence in public life with a desire to support real world businesses – cafes, restaurants, bars, events, and retailers have a renewed responsibility for customers’ health and safety.

Owners and Managers need to know the “5W’s” when it comes to floor space management – the who, what, why, when, and where – has never been more important. This knowledge only serves to heighten customer experiences and encourage return visits and long-term loyalty.

Foresense Technologies is an industry leader in the collection of customer presence data and the analysis of how customers act – and interact – in real world retail and hospitality spaces in real time.

Thorough revolutionary Artificial Intelligence, Foresense understands how a floor space is functioning and will monitor KPI’s in real-time to increase revenue at every opportunity.

Using customer smartphones, whilst respecting digital privacy, the Foresense platform collects behavioural data from the shop floor - just like online analytics, to level the playing field with the large online retailers…and more.

Learn about the entire customer journey from entry through to queuing and payment to streamline the entire customer experience. Instantly determine how many are in-store, exactly who is a new or return customer and establish peak traffic times for specific sections in the store.

Know how much time customers are spending in-store, how they navigate the space and the breakdown of their time spent in each section.

As average housing blocks get smaller and smaller in new developments and subdivisions, urban infill is placing increased pressures on accessibility to public parks and gardens.

This access to green spaces has more recently been identified as a key metric in overall wellbeing, with importance attributed to children and young people’s development, and the physical health of the population in general.

With a greater focus on mental health, green spaces have become even more topical in community groups and advocacy circles with the surrounding physical environment recognised as having great effect on people’s mood and mind set. The introduction of AI to improve measures of health and safety across any sector or industry undoubtedly has positive ramifications into the future.

Foresense Technologies enters the fray wherever behavioural patterns and human interactions with immediate surroundings is of relevance and is an industry leader in the collection of visitor presence data and the analysis of how people act – and interact – on-site in real world settings to provide real-time analytics of foot traffic inside and around any physical location. The Foresense platform offers an AI powered solution to gain an unprecedented level of insight into visitor flow and density and how they utilise and interact with on-site facilities and/ or attractions.

In a similar way to how behavioural data is utilised online through careful analysis of aspects such as dwell time, session duration, and unique and return visitations the Foresense platform collects data through proprietary sensor arrays that integrate with visitors’ smartphones.

Because the platform is accessible in real-time, highly informed, proactive decisions can be executed as trends are actually emerging. As a complete journey mapping solution, individual visitor data such as total time spent on site, and the breakdown of time spent at different areas such as restroom facilities, playgrounds, barbeques and sheltered or seated areas is collected.

With Foresense AI, green space managers can identify exactly what areas need improvement to make the space and its facilities more visitor friendly.

VISITORS TO PUBLIC buildings are often left to their own devices to explore points of interest and exhibitions without any real interaction, simply glossing over information on display or supplied booklets. Whilst organised tours and guides can offer a more informative visitor experience, they are often fast paced and impersonal; they simply cannot cater to the distinctive interests and levels of understanding of each and every visitor.

The Foresense platform can actually detect when someone stops at any given display for an extended period of time. Through push notification and smartphone technology, it can then offer visitors different tiers of information and the opportunity to learn more about what they are interested in, linking to further reading, video presentations and even augmented reality. In this way, virtual tours can become a highly personalised, heightened visitor experience, encouraging longer stays, further learning and repeat visitations.

The scope for interactivity is broadened by the capacity to include real-time questionnaires quizzes and worksheets – especially relevant for schools or tour groups to make learning more fun.

Foresense Technologies presents a solutions that lessens the reliance upon CCTV systems to monitor and gather information on behaviour, and it does this with great respect for privacy and individual anonymity. The Foresense platform is blind to individual users, and their private data.

A world leader in Artificial Intelligence presence detection technology, Foresense has already established wide ranging applications across commerce and industry making real-world spaces smarter and safer. It sees only how smartphone owners navigate physical space.

The innovative Foresense platform simplifies the collection of behavioural data and the analysis of action – and interaction – onsite in real world settings to provide real-time analytics of traffic inside and around any physical location.

INTRODUCTION

In decades of old, local retailers were central pillars in the local community.

Local people frequented and owners and shop staff knew entire families by name and the specifics of their daily lives.

Now, the proliferation of large regional shopping centres and the rise of online retail spaces have seen the death of many local retailers – and immense pressures on those who have survived to this point.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it many quirks and anomalies in how society has adapted to new paradigms of day-to-day normality.

One significant cultural phenomenon is that of a return to living local; that is people have effectively rediscovered what it means to support local businesses born of a need to keep closer to home and avoid large crowds.

Some districts effectively had this mandated with travel limits in place during the height of COVID lockdown periods.

BUILDING LOYALTY: A PROBLEM LARGELY IGNORED

COVID has shown retailers that home is where the heart is.

While small to medium enterprises have enjoyed a new vitality in local visitations, large corporations are forced to revaluate their marketing mix in driving people through their checkouts.

Heavy media campaigns and multimedia branding are unarguably effective, but this mass bombardment approach offers little support at the coalface of the retail experience.

This coalface is where significant purchase decisions are made based on customer personality traits and characteristics, where a business has the opportunity to interact and engage with people in fleeting moments.

Without the budgets for large scale advertising, local retail has long been left to their own devices and fight for market share with what they had: people.

Their own staff – through superior product knowledge, personality, and individual knowledge about their return customers – and the recognition that a heightened consumer experience is key to return visitations and long term customer retention.

Large scale retail is often guilty of adopting a mindset where mass marketing and pricing is all that is needed to maintain turnover and healthy profits.

Clearly, this is not the case.

Aisles and aisles of goods across massive floor spaces can leave a store lacking any vibrancy.

Award wage staff can often appear disinterested and disdainful.

And the stores within a chain are just carbon copies of themselves – there is nothing unique about them.

The retail experience under these conditions is faceless and grey, soulless.

THE PARADOXICAL SOLUTION: A RETROSPECTIVE MINDSET MOVING RETAIL FORWARD

Even before COVID, local retailers clearly knew that adopting a local mindset ultimately equated to greater profitability.

In throwing the casting net far and wide, mass marketing inherently lacks personalisation or tailored customer experiences.

The local business offers a highly unique capability here in really drilling down and getting to know their customers which larger stores with larger foot traffic and larger staff rosters simply cannot.
While online retail can gather a myriad of personal information which can pander to individual characteristics and help drive sales, their platforms still produce highly generic, replicable shopping experiences based upon rigid digital rules and procedural algorithms.

By returning a focus from yesteryear on a more personable approach to customer interactions experiences can be enhanced beyond any online approximation and the retail lifeline – the metaphorical rope that binds retailer and customers over time and space – is strengthened beyond question.

That is not to say that certain element of online marketing can be highly desirable if applied to real-world sites and situations…

THE GLOBAL PHENONEMA THAT IS HITTING HOME.

THERE IS ONE thing that the pandemic has shown us, home is where the heart is.

Despite lockdowns of outrageous durations, the loyalty to local store has grown exponentialy.

It has shown to large corporations that the retail lifeline, the rope holding the customer to retailer, is not just driving through heavy media campaigns and multi-media branding. Sure that gives strong support, but what about the coal face, the front line, the real-time data that shows a myriad of valuable insights to drive further sales.

Local for too long has been placed third or fourth by many retailers in the media mix.

We are not talking the corner store quarter page ad in the local suburban newspaper. We are not talking the mail drop leaflet with magnetic fridge magnet.

We are talking people. People are your greatest asset, your local customers.

In the late 80s the local suburban store knew their customers, and well.

It was a close family. Then came the mass media age and the heavy artillery of multi-media campaigns took over. In some ways the local store was left to fight with what they had.

LONG LIVE THE LOCAL STORE!

Then online took over the assault, and when local was still working through the battle plan, online stole billions of customer transactions from brick and mortar stores each week!

FROM AIRPORTS TO shopping malls, stadiums to education facilities, Foresense Technologies is revolutionizing data collection and collation across industry and commerce.

One area out of the discussion over the past two years is, however, a glaring omission.

The cruise ship industry.

Although other travel associated sectors such as accommodation and hospitality have been able to conduct minimal business activity during the COVID pandemic, cruise ships have literally been ground to a halt.

Put bluntly, the pandemic has been catastrophic for this particular sector as one of the hardest hit with significant flow on effects for economic activity and employment in the countries in which they operate.

Now, as the world continues to reopen borders and confidence in travel safety grows, cruise ships are delicately poised to resume operations across the globe.

Effectively restarting the industry from rock bottom, two key factors will ultimately determine their rate of success in achieving prepandemic revenues.

Firstly, the assurance of safety to their guests is paramount.

People simply will not travel if every safety precaution is not assured.

Secondly, the need to maximize efficiency and profit in every aspect of day-to-day operations is key to short term viability and fiscally responsible expansion overtime.

Foresense goes a long, long way in addressing these two crucial – but quite different – perspectives.

Foresense Technologies is an industry leader in the collection of visitor presence data and the analysis of how people act – and interact – on-site in real world settings to provide real-time analytics of foot traffic inside and around any physical location.

In a similar way to how behavioural data is utilised online through careful analysis of aspects such as dwell time, session duration, and unique and return visitations the Foresense platform collects data through strategically placed sensors that integrate with guest smart phones and room key cards.

This unique approach allows management real time accessibility via the Foresense Dashboard so highly informed, proactive decisions can be executed as trends are actually emerging.

The Foresense platform offers an AI powered solution to gain an unprecedented level of insight into guest flow and density and how they utilise and interact with the ship and its facilities.

Because the platform is accessible in real-time, additional staff can be deployed when and where they are needed most to reduce waiting times at entrance points to keep movement flowing and alleviate congestion.

As a complete journey mapping solution, individual guest data including the breakdown of time spent at various designated spaces such as food and dining, retail, lounge and bar facilities and gym and recreational areas is collected.

This offers a revolutionary new way to guide commercially based decisions with more detailed, quantifiable data to improve operational KPIs and efficiencies.

Optimise facility location, layout and design, service provision outlets, signage, and staffing levels across peak demand periods.

Justify the purchase of new equipment or even the construction of new facilities to limit negative guest experiences from excessive waiting or crowding.

Detailed individual profiles can be built to identify casual, frequent, and infrequent visitors of particular areas – and with a direct avenue of communication via push notification technology, offer incentivisation to increase visit frequency and/or expenditure at any area itself or at particular vendors within.

Foresense is highly customisable and can dovetail into existing systems for instant messaging, resident assistance, and on demand services.

One of the most powerful and enduring of these tenets in academia and social commentary is that the ‘The medium is the message’, first coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1964.

In this age of digital convergence, the online and real worlds merge.

Communication lines are blurred as physical spaces become increasingly digitised.

The rigid perception of e-commerce versus bricks and mortar business models – most prominent in retail spaces, but also relevant to a wide range of applications across industry and commerce – is fast becoming antiquated in the shift towards modes of true omnichannel communications.

Digital technology and Artificial Intelligence are the new hotbeds of innovation and investment, a natural progression from the focus on online disruptors alongside the rise of big data economies.

IoT technologies – that is the ‘Internet of Things’ including cameras, sensors, televisual screens, smartphones all coupled with computer data processing – have now become affordable to even the smallest businesses and store fronts.

Physical spaces become metaphysical; transforming through technology beyond human perception boundaries and limitations of knowledge.

The prevalence of high-tech digital interconnectivity in day-to-day operations across sectors including retail, education, hospitality, airports and mass transit hubs, stadiums and events, security, stock control, agriculture, real estate, child and aged care and smart buildings, enables them to evolve into something more; something on a whole new plane of understanding.

These physical spaces themselves become platforms for unidirectional informational flow and communications.

It sounds familiar because it is.

This is the very foundation the internet is built upon, and underpins the success of all online business models.

Through technology, actual buildings themselves become a medium, in a similar vein to how computers, tablets and smartphones act as a medium for the internet.

And the medium is the message.

The medium not only shapes perception but frames any content delivery in a predetermined way; the medium itself has more value in influencing desired outcomes than any message itself.

This ability to close time and distance between interacting with a brands message and actual purchase decisions gives credence to commercialisation of the concept of the bricks and mortar building as the medium.

Real time customer interactions through digital screens on site and via their own smartphones, based on parameters such as profiling and proximity triggers transform physical spaces into dynamic marketing platforms to drive profitability, customer retention and ROI for brands through highly personalised consumer experiences.

This is where IoT incorporates highly intelligent, automated advertising through machine learning and big data analytics to empower business, brand and consumer - not only in retail shopfronts but also in any transactional space across industry and commerce.

Taking a further step back such a system also allows highly intelligent, automated messaging and monitoring for almost any application where movement of people or even inventory units or livestock is key to trade.

Recognising these marked shifts now and into the future, Foresense Technologies is pioneering the meld between real and online spaces, aggregating these disparities with AI to empower businesses with the ability to bring real time big data analytics and behavioural science into day-to-day on the ground operations.

TODAY, FORESENSE TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED proudly announces a major partnership alliance with Cannaponics Limited and Produsense Pty Ltd to add collaborative high level AI and sensor technical support development to Cannaponics’ Collie WA, based smart sustainable greenhouse.

Cannaponics Limited is building a new commercial cultivation, extraction, processing, and distribution facility to compete in the rapidly growing medicinal cannabis industry. Cannaponics’ 160 acre property near Collie will become home to a 3,600sqm green house and a 2,000sqm manufacture facility.

The project is expected to become a multi million dollar enterprise, with flow on effects to benefit Collie’s economy. The state-of-the-art greenhouse, incorporating WA company Foresense AI extra sensory presence detection and Produsense Agriscience technology, will be a leading example of sustainability in action.

The McGowan Government has allocated $2 million from the Collie Futures Industry Development Fund to support the project. The Cannaponics project is creating ap-proximately 50 jobs during the 12 months of construction. Future stages of the project are planned to increase production and create more local jobs.

“Foresense Technologies’ disruptive AI technology will interface with the Cannaponics Greenhouse and Produsense Agriscience across several technical and commercial areas, utilising Foresense sensors, smart technology and the IoTs. This is a glowing example of how Western Australian Companies can collaborate together creating worldwide recognition.”
Glenn Weiland,
CEO FOUNDER, Foresense Technologies Ltd

Foresense Technologies Ltd, a WA Artificial Intelligence and Sensor Presence Detection company, jointly with sister company Produsense, is also currently in negotiations with major USA and European Producers.

Adam Leslie, CEO Co-Founder Produsense, says that food as well as medical agriscience is heading towards a connectivity fuelled transformation and already major international growers are currently involved and initiated into this project, improving crop yields, data driven with a goal of 95% accuracy with new-age technologies and data science”.

“The medicinal cannabis industry is rapidly growing, and Western Australia is well placed to compete in that industry. In our mission to complete globally we see the combined Artificial Intelligence in sensor presence detection and the agriscience technology of Produsense as a major step in global strategy.”
Rod Zakostelsky, Managing Director and FOUNDER, Cannaponics Limited.

Multiplexes, Megaplexes, Twin Cinemas, even the last remaining drive-ins, Cinema Complexes can be very busy places.

Since the Lumiere Brothers first pioneered the first public movie theatre in 1895, people have flocked to see films on the big screen as a favourite way to spend leisure time with friends and family.

Regardless of the debate at which point a multiplex becomes a megaplex (is it 14, or is it 20 screens?) modern cinema facilities are getting very large indeed.

Across the world many complexes are now housing upwards of 25, even 30 individual theatres.

Guinness World Records credits Kinépolis Movie City, Madrid, with the world’s largest capacity – a grand total seating for 9,200 patrons across its 25 screens.

Now that is BIG.

Cinema owners and managers host BIG crowds.

They show BIG pictures.

But do they really see the BIG picture themselves?

That is, do they really understand the intricacies of the how, why, who, what, where and when in the behaviour patterns of their patrons?

Do they really see the BIG picture when it comes learning these patterns over time to improve customer experiences, maximise revenue opportunities and increase profitability?

Sure, macro insights can be gleaned from measures such as overall ticket sales and peak demand times but smaller details are rarely recognised, often ignored, and never collected and collated.

Now, technology has evolved to a point where micro insight data is available across the modern cinema complex setting - fast, efficient and cost effective.

Foresense Technologies is an industry leader in the collection of visitor presence data and the analysis of how people act – and interact – on-site in real world settings to provide real-time analytics of foot traffic inside and around any physical location.

In a similar way to how behavioural data is utilised online through careful analysis of aspects such as dwell time, session duration, and unique and return visitations the Foresense platform collects data through a network of sensors integrating with visitors’ smartphones allowing accessibility in real time so highly-informed, proactive decisions can be executed as trends are actually emerging.

The Foresense platform offers an AI powered solution to gain an unprecedented level of insight into patron flow and density and how they utilise and interact with cinema complex facilities.

Because the platform is accessible in real-time, additional staff can be deployed when and where they are needed most to reduce waiting times at entrance, ticketing and security points to keep movement flowing and alleviate congestion.

As a complete journey mapping solution, individual patron data such as total time spent on site, and the breakdown of time spent seated and at different areas such as food, restroom, and lobby facilities is collected.

This offers a revolutionary new way to guide commercially based decisions with more detailed, quantifiable data to improve operational KPIs and efficiencies. Optimise facility location, layout and design, service provision outlets, signage and staffing levels across peak demand periods.

Detailed individual profiles can be built to identify casual, frequent and infrequent visitors – and with a direct avenue of communication via push notification technology, offer incentivisation to increase visit frequency and expenditure at the cinema itself or at other hospitality and retail vendors within the complex.

In this way, ensure that every visitor is encouraged to visit snack facilities with real-time proximity discounts – or encourage ticketing purchases for future releases.

The technology is so comprehensive, time points in each individual film can be correlated with other data including snack or restroom visits - or even walkouts!

And because the technology only interacts with individual smartphone identifiers, personal anonymity is completely retained to alleviate any privacy concerns.

For VIP customers, Foresense can take loyalty and rewards programs to a whole new level.