Monday, 18 April 2016 04:24

Why is it Important to Store Customer Traffic Data on Your Own Servers?

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As of today, the retail market companies judge the data processing visitor counters to be the true electronic assistants. High-quality customer counting systems help obtain more detailed information on buyers and their preferences, find out what the people behavior factors are and estimate the company efficiency in general. Store traffic data should work for the benefit of the company, showing the current state of things and constantly providing the analysts with the most acute metrics for business promotion.

There are several types of companies at the modern customer counting systems market. They differ in the way the data is stored and processed. The companies of the first type offer to upload customer traffic data to servers, controlled by the integrator itself. Such an approach allows to charge the customer service fees, the annual payments cumulatively often to exceed the counter installation price. These integrator companies explain it by the fact that server data is monitored and controlled on a day-to-day basis, the actual data compliance check to be held continuously. The reality is that such measures make no sense at all. Here you are welcome to make conclusions yourself: if the erroneous data enters the server or the percentage error, which can be the difference between incoming and outgoing customers, for example, is high, then there must be some problem with the equipment. The customer counters, especially the ones with the video analytics built in, in the first place depend on the way they are installed and adjusted. If the data has errors or differs considerably, the installation place is to be changed. It should not go unspoken, that the integrator companies are not eagerly anxious to come to client’s venues daily to adjust a counter, otherwise, their business won’t produce as much profit. For them it’s much easier to fit some average values into wherever the difference is discovered. This way they can eat the cake and still have it:  the client will consider the equipment to provide more precise data and the integrator company will save the resources it has. If you don’t see the counter data itself and don’t know whether it’s real or not, you can’t trust the statistics collected.

Another essential disadvantage of storing data at an outside server is not being able to access the data, when you really need it. For instance, you are going to run a customer traffic attraction marketing campaign to draw the mall visitors into your store, using the promotion leaflets. Thereto you invite a specialist, who starts working from early morning. It goes without saying, that as to assess the effectiveness of the campaign you will need the acute detailed statistics data of how many visitors have been attracted during the first twenty minutes, hour, three hours, five hours etc. As a result, you will be able both to control the work of the person, giving the leaflets out, and to estimate the attraction price in terms of the day. However those who entrust data storing and processing to a third party won’t be able to get this statistics all through the day. At best, they will send you a detailed analysis at the end of the day or the morning after it, and you will have to guess, what was happening at the time interval, you are interested in - whether the ad-man has just thrown the leaflets out, or the mall traffic at this time is not to be your targeted audience.

Today many companies say that another disadvantage of third party servers is their inability to provide the adequate security. And it’s pretty clear – you can’t guarantee the security of the objects you are not able to control. Of course, the customer traffic counting integrators have adapted to the situation and localized NDA – nondisclosure agreement – to demonstrate they are fair business oriented. Still, it doesn’t change the very core of the subject – your traffic data is in some other’s hands. Who is the one to guarantee it won’t be used by peers some day?

Unlike the integrators, making money from subscriber fees and servicing customer counting systems of the other companies, the Ufatech company offers box solutions that allow to avoid using third party services after the customer counting system is launched. The Ufatech visitor counters upload all the traffic data onto the customer company servers only. Such approach makes it possible to provide 24 hour access to data and obtain the real time data on your stores. Herewith, the system is monitored automatically, using the inbuilt algorithm, analyzing the state of each sensor in the network. Consequently, you will be able to see which sensor needs to be controlled.

Here are the main advantages of the closed system, i.e. system where the data is stored at counter customer servers:

∗ Third party independence;

∗ Ability to use real time data;

∗ No subscriber fees;

∗ Security and data loss prevention;

∗ Ability to get real data from counters;

∗ Ability to access data from any system connected device;

∗ Quick decision making.

A genuinely high-grade and functional solution for customer counting should make it possible to control the data whenever you need it. This is what every MegaCount employee and every modern company, choosing an efficient instrument for customer traffic analysis, considers it to be like.

Kirill

Project manager