Download 10 benefits of in-store video business intelligence for casinos/resorts

 10 BENEFITS OF IN‐STORE VIDEO BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR CASINOS/RESORTS By Al Cordoba SUMMARY An advanced in‐store video business intelligence and decision support system could help a casino/resort retail operations. These systems capture actionable in‐store data. They provide an open, flexible, and future proof system. They also provide detailed customer behavior analysis at a fraction of the cost of in‐store observation studies. These solutions can provide significant return on technology investment THE PROBLEM Today, the overwhelming majority of casino/resort store retailers have no ability to systematically analyze video data integrated with in‐store data beyond point‐of‐sale transactions. POS is the only consistent input into staffing tools, and marketing measurement systems. Some data can be available through consulting projects and observation studies only. This latter option is expensive and provides only a snapshot in time. Unfortunately, the inferences from the observation studies also cannot be rolled out on a large scale consistently. SOME TECHNOLOGY APPROACHES One approach is to use traffic management/People counting solution. These solutions focus on collection of traffic data at external entrances only. They are mostly closed solutions that require installation of dedicated cameras/counting devices. They are not optimized for correlation of multiple data sources and lack video integration. They have limited real‐time applications and virtually no vertical applications focused on the specific casino/resort retail business problems. A second approach could be to use video analytics from companies focus on security. These security solutions are not optimized for a casino/resort retail environments and are typically very expensive to setup and maintain. They are designed as closed systems competing based on accuracy of algorithms. We have not found any casino/resort security video applications optimized for business intelligence & decision support of any kind. A third option could be start from companies that may focus on casino/resort retail business data and add video data. Unfortunately, these companies don’t have a comprehensive data collection & analysis framework for video data. They have limited integration with other business systems and provide no remote visual analysis framework. A SOLUTION Another possibility is to use mature video analytics vendors. They typically provide two components: An In‐Store Appliance and a Regional/Corporate Applicance. The In‐Store component includes: (1) Video analysis & recording, (2) High scale data acquisition, (3) Real‐time data correlation & automatic actions, and (4) Integration with in‐store systems. The second component could be Regional/Corporate Appliance. This appliance includes: (1) High‐Scale data aggregation and long term storage (>12 months), (2) Sophisticated reporting and (3) Automatic data analytics including data mining. This mature video analytics vendors have products designed to leverage existing in‐store infrastructure. These products integrate existing analog and IP cameras, DVRs, and integrate POS, EAS and other in‐
store applications. These vendors have an open approach to video analytics. They provide a best‐of‐
breed analytics integrated into the system complete with integrated services. They support edge analytics. They provide the ability to integrate any external video analytics compliant with industry standards (ARTS Analytics Standard) The mature video analytics products are optimized to work within existing in‐store IT infrastructure. They create little or no impact on existing casino/resort retail systems performance. These systems have a simple functional architecture that provide the ability to collect, aggregate, analyze and visualize casino/resort retail data. These systems provide the integration of data coming from video cameras (video and audio), POS systems, business systems, and security applications. They take both unstructured data and transactional data and integrate the data into an Intelligent Collection Mart complete with a Web services API (analytical framework). These mature video companies leverage their technology across different casino/resort departments. For instance, monitor surveillance cameras, track trends between casino stores, provide timeline views and graphs, show interactive casino/resort retail store maps, conduct POS detail searches, provide in‐
depth analysis on casino/resort retail stores. 10 BENEFITS OF VIDEO ANALYTICS 1. Improve Staffing Effectiveness 2. Increase Conversion Rate 3. Drive up Margins 4. Make Better In‐Store Merchandising Decisions 5. Measure ROI on Advertisement 6. Validate New In‐Store Concepts 7. Gather Data on Specific Brands 8. Validate Display Programs 9. Enable More Remote Activities 10. Improve Loss Prevention Efficiency THE POWER OF IN‐STORE VISUAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE In‐store visual business intelligence allows casino/resort management to track consistently & accurately : •
Foot Traffic •
Dwell Times •
Views •
Consumer Behavior •
Point‐of‐Sale Activity •
Conversion Rates •
Staff‐to‐Customer Ratios