Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
1. Introduction ________________________ 2
2. Beacon powered solutions_______________ 3
2.1 Inform__________________________ 3
2.2 Sell ___________________________ 4
2.3 Interact________________________ 5
2.4 Navigate________________________ 6
2.5 Analyze________________________ 7
2.6 Track__________________________ 8
2.7 Secure_________________________ 9
3. Conclusion ________________________ 10
One of the innovative technologies that combine both of these features is the beacon.
Using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) it broadcasts a signal to all smart devices in its range.
This signal triggers a customized event in your customers app that can be related to a
specific item or a location he / she is next to at this exact moment.
In comparison with other solutions, which can secure a similar result, beacons are much
cheaper and easier to use, maintain, and install.
Besides, the number of ways they can be used is almost limitless! So why not give it a try?
Introduction
Inform
passing by
Send agenda of your event or
customers nearby
Is this something that interests you? Find out more below! Or scroll down to check the
next solution.
Sharing information related to a specific place or object is one of the most popular and
Beacon
powered solutions
event agendas, brochures or schedules as people enter the venue or approach your
stand at the exhibition;
4
You can even reward your audience with access to otherwise chargeable information.
Shinjusha Video Journal used this approach of granting free access to VIP content in order
President of
Shinjusha Co.,
Ltd., Video Journal
publisher
next solution.
Information sharing goes hand in hand with commercial messaging. The difference
between two solutions is very simple: one is used to inform, the other to sell.
If you are a retailer, you probably invest a lot of effort into raising your customers
awareness of sales, discounts, deals, coupons or loyalty points.
Beacons will help you achieve these actions more efficiently. By adding hyperlocal and
customized context to your marketing messages that are delivered directly to customers
Sharing information not only helps you to attract revenue - it can also save you money. For
smartphones you will be able to attract more new customers and engage better with
example, TEDx Conference in Padova (Italy) reduced spendings on printing costs by 45%
existing ones.
using beacon triggered messages instead of leaflets for their Innovation Hall exhibition. Not
to mention the positive impact on the environment!
This feature is already highly popular in large malls and leisure centers such as Vulcano
Buono in Italy, where boutiques can send out coupons and information about sales to
people passing by. Ebizu, a Malaysian business solutions provider, among other functions
enables a hands-free check-in that helps visitors of shopping centers to seamlessly collect
loyalty points.
Sell
Rohit
Maheswaran,
Co-Founder and
CPO of Ebizu Sdn
Bhd.
Moreover, thanks to the shared access feature of Kontakt.io beacons it became possible
for Ebizu to capitalize on their beacon network by giving access to other proximity solution
As you can see, there are many ways beacons can help your business to grow.
notifications
And its not only limited to retail: museums, universities, cinemas, and even zoos are using
5
beacons to sell. For example, Italian zoo called Zoom Torino is planning use beacons to
offer different special promotions to visitors in their leisure zones and restaurants based
on the weather conditions outside (two ice-creams for the price of one during summer or a
free hot tea with a meal on a rainy day).
booking processes
hunts
exchange information
Finally, it is possible to integrate beacons with your Point of Sale (POS) to enable customers
to purchases with a single touch in their smartphone app. If you are receiving information
about products, offers, and loyalty points through your app, the natural last step is to pay
for goods or services using the same tool - your smartphone.
For example, a beacon-enabled mobile app of a Swiss watchmaker company Franck Muller
not only gives a customer an opportunity to select the dimensions, materials, and color of
the watch but also to place an order and to pay for it.
stand in line
Enable exchange of contact
information through proximity app at
your event
Interact
Is this something that interests you? Find out more below! Or scroll down to check the
next solution.
This type of solution is widely used for educational purposes. It is very popular with
museums, exhibitions, universities or zoos. Depending on your app, beacons can trigger
text, photo, video or audio information about what your visitors are observing right now.
Beacons can also make your objects talk making visitors experience more personal and
interactive.
Using multiple beacons you can create not just specific interactive objects, but entire
interactive spaces, where people will be constantly engaged wherever they go.
Universitys app about where they are, what they can do there, or how to get to another
place. For example, if a student is staying next to a deans office, he can effortlessly
Liliana Lato,
Head of the
International
Relations Office
of the University
of Lodz
For example, University of Lodz (Poland) beconized all of their 38 buildings and dormitories
your venue
Enable users to interact with your
product or service
When it comes to building proximity-based interactions with your users, skys the limit:
you can create quizzes and treasure hunts around your interactive objects, rewarding
users with points, just like one festival did in Romania;
you can connect visitors with the experts who will answer live questions about an
event, venue or exhibits just like in Brooklyn Museum;
following the example of the eFan24 platform that operates on stadiums, you can link
venue
Make indoors navigation accurate,
directed, and real-time
changing spaces like exhibition halls
of contact information at an event via proximity app: attendees by simply wave their
your proximity solutions with social media, enabling users to share their experience
finally, similarly to ACE of M.I.C.E Exhibition in Turkey, you can enable the exchange
navigation solutions
Is this something that interests you? Find out more below! Or scroll down to check the
For example, Auto Ganza, an official Volkswagen dealer in Moscow, deployed beacons at
next solution.
its showroom to help visitors schedule a test drive. An app called Orderella that is used by
the restaurants and bars in UK limits queues by enabling customers to order meals via their
So far weve talked about beacon solutions that help you to inform. But what about
Navigate
For example, you can link beacon-enabled navigation features in your app with the realtime or offline schedules. This becomes particularly useful at concerts, universities or
airports. In fact, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines already implemented such solution at the
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Transfer passengers using the beacon supported app can
easily find the path to their next gate and estimate the time they need to get there.
Watch how it happens from an end-user perspective.
spaces
end user
7
Weve all experienced how GPS navigation starts to act all crazy the moment we enter the
building. Well, beacons help to bridge this gap.
Analyze
The beacon powered app using triangulation can detect the exact position of every
Bluetooth device in the venue. For the end-users, it will work similarly to GPS, but with
higher energy efficiency. Alternatively, you can build your app basing the navigation
feature on visitors approximate location. In this case, it will work similarly to those you are
here maps in shopping centers.
This can become a lifesaver if your venue is big and tortuous, with many different rooms
and turnings. It can also help visitors to fully discover your space! For example, the Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery introduced an app called The Hidden Museum that encourages
visitors to discover parts of the museum they would not normally see, such as seldom
visited galleries, collections not currently on display and behind-the-scenes stories.
It might sound like we are setting beacons against GPS. Thats not true! They can and
should work together. Take the example of Blind Square, who developed a solution to
help visually impaired people navigate at Penn State University in U.S. It uses beacons
for navigation inside the campus buildings and switches to GPS when you exit outside.
Beacons make the app context-rich by giving you information about the location,
With beacons navigation feature you can make guides for cities, museums or landmarks
those spaces
even more interesting, context-rich, and interactive, giving tourist from all over the world
direction, and surrounding environment: rooms and buildings you are passing, doors and
stairs in front of you, upcoming changes of the walking surface and so on.
your employees
office
improve customers journey through their shops or boost sales by re-arranging the space
according to the most popular areas. This approach was used by the Carrefour chain in
Tunisia. It helped to improve what the store offers and understand where its possible to
your hospital
Find your notebook and never lose it
again in your office or dormitory
Others, like Groningen Museum in Netherlands, draw heatmaps of their venues based on
aggregated visitors behavior data in order to figure out which areas are the most popular
Is this something that interests you? Find out more below! Or scroll down to check the
next solution.
Sietze de Jong ,
But wait, theres more! Beacons can not only be used to track smartphones. They can
become tracking devices themselves.
Lets imagine that you have a warehouse with hundreds of containers that are constantly
on the move for loading or unloading. It can be difficult to find a specific one at short
notice. Mounting beacons can help you to establish a monitoring system for keeping track
and locating every single one of them.
If you are organizing a big concert or a festival, visitors behavior data can be crucial for
crowd management. It can also help to find out which stage was the most visited or who
This applies not only to stocks and stones but also to animals. Just look at theses cute
alpacas with Kontakt.io Tough Beacons!
was the most popular artist (by combining data on the most visited location with the
specific time slot). The German Reeperbahn Festival, for example, used data collected
through beacons to better design their next events.
Szymon
Alternatively, you can use beacons to track your employees movements during the day or
Niemczura ,
CEO at Kontakt.io
establish a system of check-ins. This can significantly improve the quality of some specific
services such as cleaning, which can be crucial for hygiene standards at various production
sites, in hospitals or swimming pools.
Although in this example beacons are used for entertainment and educational purposes,
Track
you can imagine how they might become handy on farms where you need to monitor your
stock.
You can install beacons on vehicles like cars or bikes with apps such as Blueanker that
informs the user that the vehicle is moving when he / she is not around. Chances are this
is because someone attempts to steal it! The notification helps users to react quickly and
also locate the stolen vehicle if its in the range of a beacon signal.
You might think that beacons look too fragile to last through constant vibrations from
movement an d harsh environmental conditions. Dont let the appearance fool you! For
example, Kontakt.ios Tough Beacon is built specifically to be always on the move and
survive in Bear Grylls-style conditions.
9
Moreover, beacons not only survive harsh conditions themselves: they can also save others!
Finding a right drug or a piece of equipment on time might become a matter of life and
They can be integrated with electronic locks to secure doors in your office, household or a
venue. There is no need to carry around a bunch of keys anymore. Your smartphone is the
Finally, if you are simply losing your personal belongs all the time in your office, dormitory
And lets be honest: we care about our smartphones more than for our keys nowadays. So
or home, beacons can become your magic finder. Mount beacons on your valuables and
having a smartphone key significantly lowers the chances of losing or forgetting it.
never lose them again. Kontakt.ios new USB Beacon is specifically useful in case you want
At least this is true for the residents of a building in Hoboken, New Jersey where KISI, a local
to have your laptop or other portable USB devices always within sight.
Security
Transmission in chainless bikes and even cars can be upgraded with a beaconized lock that
unlocks your vehicle only after smartphone identification. The JIVR | Bike has such function
in combination with alerts and tracking system, which works similar to already mentioned
Blueanker app. Its a bike that is really difficult to steal!
https://webpage-cdn.kontakt.io/uploads/2015/03/12123135/JIVR-.jpg
However, security is not only about technologies, but also about people responsible for
guarding your assets. The human factor is always a weak link in many security systems. Just
remember all these James Bond or Mission Impossible movies to understand what I mean.
However, beacons can help even here. We already mentioned how beacons help to
track cleaning staff in hospitals. If you will do the same for your security guards, youll be
able to see in real time how efficiently they are protecting the perimeter or if they are at
checkpoints on time.
locks
Not only goods can be protected this way, but also people! For example, Elite-ID
Electronics has been trailing a system for swimming pools and fitness centers across
Australia to ensure that lifeguards are effectively patrolling pools and prevent drownings.
10
Congratulations!
HIGH
FIVE
Chances are that you already found a beacon-powered solution for your business.
In this case, you would probably need some hardware to bring it to life. Luckily, we produce
a reliable high-performance product that can be on your doorstep en masse within a week.
See for yourself in our Store.
If you would like to learn more about proximity solutions, check out here more beacon use
cases implemented for various retailers, museums and events.
Conclusion
11