Maheen Zaidi, CEO and Co-Founder In an era where a quarter of the world’s population is smartphone equipped, retail industry is also experiencing its share of technology disruption where the ubiquity of mobile devices is being embraced for positive shopper experience and customer loyalty. “There is an undeniable user paradigm shift to smartphone devices as a personal digital assistant tool for shopping, finding location, entertainment, gaming, task organization and communication,” reveals Maheen Zaidi, CEO and Co-Founder, Smart Fission. Alarmed by the fact that mobile expansion may negatively impact in-store spending, the next-generation concept of retail stores is looking forward to bring the offline and online experience together. Apart from offering applications to compare price, find the best offers and product reviews from peers, retailers are now rapidly adopting indoor technologies to extend mobile location-based services for shoppers. Imagine a map offering a route to a certain item of interest in a retail store with turn by turn directions using WiFi and beacons. This is precisely what Smart Fission is offering to its customers.
After a meticulous year long market research, focus studies and consumer interviews, the founders of Smart Fission were illuminated with the understanding of indoor engagement model for mobile shoppers. This understanding conceived the idea of Smart Fission—a highly customized indoor navigation mobile platform—in 2014, packed with vertical-specific business intelligence enabling end users to locate and navigate to their item of interest using their smartphones. “Smart Fission offers an end-to-end mobile technology platform to businesses that wish to integrate indoor positioning, mapping and navigation features for their end users’ mobile app,” explains Zaidi.
The product gamut of the high-accuracy indoor positioning and navigation platform comprises of two applications—Shop Trekker and Show Trekker.
We offer the micro position with less than 3 feet of variance, which is quite accurate
Shop Trekker, an end-user customer app, assists in finding user's location in a retail, small- to medium-size shops and shopping malls whereas Show Trekker—Smart Fission mobile app—is used at conventions, tradeshows and exhibitions vertical assisting the users in event navigation by offering dynamic turn-by-turn navigation for a searched company, exhibitor or event.
The Wishlist Management feature of Shop Trekker allows shoppers to create a wishlist and dynamically route them to the item on their wishlist – down to the aisle and shelf location. The application also generates Proximity Alerts notifying the users about the availability of a product on their wishlist when they walk by the stores. In addition to this, the apps also analyze the foot-traffic at client’s store or event and measure KPI for planning the next event or store layout and product placement. The applications integrate seamlessly with the client's existing mobile app without disrupting their current mobile strategy.
The main takeaway of the firm’s platform lies in the accuracy of micro positioning of the users indoor with a combination of certain factors and platforms. “We offer the micro position with less than 3 feet of variance, which is quite accurate,” extols Zaidi. The company has established strategic alliances with technology partners Radius Networks and Unacast in deployment of the platform with hardware and retargeting features.
Paraphrasing the CEO, Google is the magnate when it comes to outdoor navigation, however, there is a huge untapped opportunity and requirement for mobile users to locate products and point of interest indoors and navigation to it. Along these lines, the company is aware of the indoor location services are gaining traction and is dedicated to offer customers a platform for indoor positioning and navigation which is highly accurate. “Developing the technology platform that solves the customer and enterprise real-world problems with a meaningful solution is exhilarating,” concludes Zaidi.
