Buzd: Processing Dynamic and Organic Data to Empower Businesses

Glenn Weiland, COO

Unlocking the value of data has now become the key to success for organizations that are wasting no time to build or use processes designed not just to hold data but to capture all of it. As companies gear up to deal with an outstanding amount of challenges, analytics to improve revenue has become hugely essential mostly for organizations lacking access to a modern Data Scientist team. In many industries today, there is an increasing focus on data and by applying real-time analytics to understand customer behavior, big data companies have found a way out of this problem. While this certainly demands a shift in how a business functions such as doing away with older systems and the introduction of analytics, but the value conversion of data to ROI, sales, empowerment etc. makes the efforts worth while.

As the one of the leading global data analytics company, buzd does this task to almost perfection. With its real-time big data analytics system, buzd builds a rich data profile of customers’ behaviors and preferences enabling businesses to analyze, discover and implement new customer engagement opportunities, enhance customer service, optimize merchandise, store layout, security and staffing. The factor that drove the company in its quest to show ROI and value add from data generated was a realization of the gap in the market which hindered companies to proactively deploy marketing initiatives. Stuart Hall, CTO, buzd had an entrancing journey as an IT veteran before he stumbled upon a project to consult on replacing some ageing DSL routers at 400+ locations around Western Australia. This took him extremely closer to the world of Bricks-and-Mortar businesses. When he worked with enterprises to contribute in better delivering marketing efforts specific to the various geographies and demographics, he found the existing solutions not powerful enough to break down the traffic. Luckily for Stuart the secret mantra revealed itself that how a quality analytics provider can step in to bridge the on site data gap in business. This sowed the seeds for buzd and its existence as data conversion specialists.

Turning the Intangible into Tangible

Buzd technology can be deployed to solve the simplest of information gaps (such as total traffic & conversion rate by department by store) or much more complex problems. With buzd real time data analytics companies gain the ability to unlock the physical potential of their business. Noteworthy is the company’s advanced tech sensors that follow data through to conversion, nurture it and during the potential sale help in converting the knowledge within data into valuable propositions. When other players in the market tended to just count traffic, buzd developed features such as real-time tracking of location visitors, A-B analysis, and real-time feedback, increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and events. Stuart explains “It is a difficult but rewarding challenge of our business, to change the way business looks at itself and works with its core data. That is why buzd is pioneering real time onsite data from Casinos to Taxi Lines in Nevada to retails stores, shopping malls and car parks around the world.”

For business owners there are always grey areas in the business operations known as the black hole of operations where some things are deemed as intangible or the owner feels in some way helpless or powerless to gain a full hold on operations. But buzd has grown in strength and power to turn the intangible into the tangible. buzd allow customers to alter their marketing to suit local traffic conditions immediately there fore getting a much better return on their marketing investment. The company enables its partners to react swiftly in order to help them learn everything about the customer and their preferences like how many customers where really in the store or location, how many stayed longer than engagement and how many left without a sale in a short period of time. The pioneers of true location analytics solutions, buzd has flourished in its endeavor to build a business that does much more than count traffic.

The Making of New Retail Marketers

Committed to bring real accountability to marketing, buzd initial focus was in the retail bricks and mortar space. Bricks and mortar news agencies have struggled to keep up with the online stores who have taken a giant leap forward by understanding their customers better through data analysis.

But this reflects only the half of the story as companies like buzd have played the role of an innovative analytics partner helping them to respond to the challenges. For instance, buzd provided ANF, a bricks and mortar business with a rich set of tools that helped them to put the old social feel back into the shopping experience. Buzd’s sophisticated applications and social media tools, enable customers to interact directly and help retailers change product lines and store layouts, change opening hours, and deliver customized information back to the customers. Add to this, the buzd dash board which is a constantly evolving ecosystem designed to display various interpretations of the raw data collected by the sensors makes building up real-time results much easier for the company. Buzd Global Director of Marketing, Glenn Wei Land highlighted the marketing power of Retail Analytics; “With our reporting dash board, marketers can drive pre-purchase, in-store and post purchase campaigns on an individual basis with total accountability - ROI planning, execution and reporting in real-time!”

Sarah Garvey State Manager for the ANF WA worked closely with buzd in the trial and commented: “Working with ANF innovation partner buzd and three established WA news agencies, the trial focused on what collectively was identified as the three key retail challenges – collecting relevant customer data, distilling the data using real time analytics to identify opportunities and finally, connecting with the customers to build sales. Outstanding analytical results were experienced revealing major points of vital value to agents and the ANF.”

Buzd’s team of developers has an intimate understanding of the construction of Wi-Fi packets which allows them to develop the required algorithms to ensure the most accurate results.

Buzd also addresses a far wider range of industries owing to its rapid and agile development processes. Its ability to provide real-time information to people in queues at sporting events is one of them. For example, in stadiums, the long queues at food and beverage outlets can force a customer to give up waiting in the current queue, resulting in huge revenue losses. Buzd helps by displaying queue lengths on video screens at each outlet and encouraging patrons to go to another outlet with a smaller queue and make a purchase worth millions of dollars per year to food and beverage resellers. "Our philosophy is to educate our customers on how to utilise their unique data to make fact-based business decisions. Putting the tools in their hands to improve areas such as staff management, store layout, marketing - all of which can increase bottom line profitability," Stuart comments, a sentiment agreed with by Jacques Bland In, CEO at BuzD.

Promoting the Utilization and Application of the Data

Buzd’s team of developers has an intimate understanding of the construction of Wi-Fi packets which allows them to develop the required algorithms to ensure the most accurate results. Combining technical capabilities with backgrounds in marketing, retail and large commercial organizations, the company always finds a way to ensure that its data virtualization solutions provided through the dashboard are both meaningful and easy to understand. Stuart entails, “As far as how we have motivated retailers to both use and leverage our analytics I believe that it is a result of our core philosophy of education customers around the utilization and application of the data we provide as opposed to simply selling them a product and moving on to the next prospect as we have seen happen all too often by other providers.”

Jacques Bland In, President and CEO, buzd adds, “We don’t walk in and tell prospects how great we are or that we are the golden sauce that will fix all of their woes. If we cannot uncover how we can add value to a prospects business we will politely walk away letting them know that we don’t feel we can add sufficient value to their particular business.” However, this only occurs in rare cases where the prospect either does not really understand their marketer has no real desire to accept advice from an external source.

With over 25 technology projects on this calendar year and another 40 or so planned for next calendar year, buzd is quickly changing the analytics landscape. Despite the success of its tools and systems, the company has specifically developed and deployed sensors powered with solar energy and built-in SIM cards for connectivity. Another current field test involves integrating sensors with mobile digital billboards on top of vehicles and queue counters sending data directly into taxi dispatch systems and dashboard job displays. Outside of the technology buzd is building a team of industry specialists who provide customer consulting services that examine collected data and provide advice on how and where the data can have a positive impact on their business. The company wants to bring the connected and social experience back to physical stores, by helping organisations understand and improve the experience of their customers. Stuart in his concluding lines emphasized the importance of real-time big data, “Over the past few years we have been able to influence many vendors to include capabilities that we can leverage in order to provide greater levels of accuracy and performance in the areas of device detection and collection of data allowing buzd to deliver a level of analytics not common in the industry.”