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Retailers look to WiFi for digital transformation


Johannesburg, 20 Feb 2019

CIOs in the retail sector are increasingly looking to location analytics provided by sophisticated WiFi marketing solutions to address digital transformation.

This is the view of Wade Gomes, Sales Director of Corr-Serve, a local value-added distributor that represents Cloud4Wi in the South African market, a leading provider of location analytics and marketing solutions.

Research firm Forrester uses one of Cloud4Wi's clients, the Prada Group, in its report: "Digitally Transform In-store Experiences with Sensor-Based Technology and Analytics", as an example of a retailer creating superior in-store experiences using WiFi.

According to Forrester: "Retail stores have been living in an analytical 'dark age' compared with digital channels, relegated to measurement techniques that rarely consider customer behaviour. However, advances in in-store customer sensor and analytics technologies are transforming how digital business professionals and retailers win, serve, and retain customers within the physical store."

Cloud4Wi offers an AI-driven product suite for location analytics. With Cloud4Wi, retailers can collect anonymised customer insights through their in-store WiFi services. For customers who opt in, retailers can create unique customer profiles that include offline behavioural characteristics, and do so in compliance with GDPR.

"Prada provides a good example for retailers looking to boost customer experience and improve customer onboarding by providing free WiFi services to in-store customers, and to use the WiFi signals to track in-store behaviours," adds Forrester.

"South African retailers have an enormous opportunity to improve customer experience by leveraging the power of analytics when providing in-store or in-mall WiFi services," concludes Gomes.

(1) Forrester: "Digitally Transform In-store Experiences with Sensor-Based Technology and Analytics", James McCormick, Fiona Swerdlow, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Martin Gill, Brendan Witcher, Lily Varon, and Heidi Anderson, January 7 2019

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Corr-Serve

Corr-Serve is an authorised distributor of intelligent IT solutions that extract and interpret data from business for better decision-making. Corr-Serve finds the best technology to give clarity, insight and visibility across the business. The company believes that by driving an intelligence-centric approach to IT, South African business can find the best performance, profits and returns.

Corr-Serve actively contributes to empowerment and transformation and is a level one contributor to the B-BBEE Code of Good Practice. Learn more at www.corrserve.co.za.

Cloud4Wi

Cloud4Wi offers a cloud-based application suite for location services. Its mission is to help enterprises across multiple industries, retail chains, restaurant chains, shopping centres, transportation and more, better understand and engage customers. Top global brands currently relying on Cloud4Wi include ABSA, Adecco, Armani, Burger King, Carmila, Diamond Internationals, Gruppo FS Italiane, HFE, Illy, Lacoste, McDonald's, Olive Garden, Prada Group and VTB24. To date, Cloud4Wi's suite connects more than 130 million mobile users across 45 000 locations in more than 120 countries, while collecting more than 10 billion of location data per month. Cloud4Wi HQ are in San Francisco, with offices in New York, London, Paris, Milan, Pisa, Rio De Janeiro and Bangkok. Learn more about Cloud4Wi and its applications at www.cloud4wi.com.

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