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Ahren Ewbank, Services Architect, Logicalis US

Have you ever gone to the mall and, as you stepped out of your car in the parking lot, received a text message with a coupon attached for exactly what you were there to buy?  You wonder, “How do they do that!?” as you proceed to buy the most wonderful pair of shoes that ever existed.

The answer to your perfunctory question is location-based enterprise wi-fi software delivered as a service and integrated with the mall’s unified communication system.  When you accepted the mall’s invitation for a recent coupon or special “by invitation only” sales event, chances are you logged in with your Facebook page.  That gave the mall’s specialized wi-fi solution access to your browsing history and other Facebook analytics information, which is how they knew you needed a pair of pumped up red shoes to go with that holiday dress for the office Christmas party.  And the fact that the mall’s marketing team knew that made their CIO look especially brilliant because the IT department held a meeting a few months ago with the sales and marketing teams to talk up the virtues of location-based enterprise wi-fi software.

And it’s not just for retail, either. Location-based enterprise wi-fi software is something CIOs of any public-facing organization should be considering as a way to communicate more effectively with their constituents.  The nice thing about top-of-the-line enterprise wi-fi solutions, particularly those like Logicalis’ ITUMA solution, is that, from a wireless perspective, they are technology agnostic and can be delivered as a service capable of working seamlessly with any organization’s underlying infrastructure. With solutions like these, you can help your marketers build a customized portal that captures and analyzes deep customer data while allowing the marketing team to more effectively tailor your organization’s go-to-market strategy. In short, enterprise wi-fi software simplifies the often complex task of delivering meaningful mass communication to individual targets.

If you’re interested in learning more, there are five important things you should know about this technology that can help you bridge the gap between the online and on-site experience your patients, citizens, students or shoppers have when they receive communications from your organization.

Available as a Service

Location-based enterprise wi-fi solutions are available as SaaS implementations. The great thing about software-as-a-service is the “as a service” part.  There’s nothing for the IT department to worry about. The CIO purchases an enterprise wi-fi software solution on a subscription basis; Logicalis hosts the software and provides Tier-1 support, while ITUMA provides the implementation and maintenance of the software.  You consume the technology as a service, and all your marketing team has to do is manage the content.

No Rip-And-Replace Needed

No matter what unified communications platform your business runs on, a modern enterprise wi-fi solution can sync with it. The fact that enterprise wi-fi is technology agnostic is especially good news for retailers, for example, that have a chain of stores that may have a variety of equipment installed in different locations.

Device Independent

Because enterprise wi-fi solutions rely on common web standards and are managed from a single dashboard, your marketing platform looks and feels consistent to the public regardless of the device the consumer, patient, student or citizen is using to receive their messages.  A sophisticated enterprise wi-fi solution will recognize the user’s device of choice and adjust the content’s format for optimal presentation.

Boon to Marketing

Reaching mobile customers with personalized messages is a tough task, something which marketers and public space managers struggle with every day. Without an enterprise wi-fi solution in place, your marketing team must rely on Facebook, Twitter and an array of advertising vehicles to reach the public, but messages often miss the mark or arrive at the wrong time. If a grocery chain, for example, emails a customer on Sunday about an upcoming promotion, but the customer doesn’t plan to shop until Thursday, the message may be long forgotten by the time the customer enters the store.  If, however, the promotion is pushed to the customer’s mobile phone via short message service (SMS) just as he or she enters the store’s parking lot, the message becomes much more valid and timely.

Delivers a Better Customer Experience

It seems like just about everyone is looking for a mobile-first strategy these days. With an enterprise wi-fi SaaS solution, you can seamlessly move relevant messages from bricks to clicks, delivering more targeted data to recipients.  Consider the shopper who has been searching the Internet for the right pair of shoes for a special event; upon arriving at the mall, the shopper receives notification of a shoe sale inside, as well as a coupon for the very kind of shoes she needs.  By initially asking the shopper to opt-in using a Facebook logon, the solution now has access to Facebook analytics that give the mall the information it needs to provide targeted, useful information to the shopper the moment she arrives on site. Imagine also a patient coming to a hospital for an outpatient radiology exam.  How convenient might it be to sync the patient’s appointment schedule with directions that lead the patient to the right department, sharing that information via SMS upon his or her arrival in the hospital parking lot? Use cases like these clearly show the advantages of an enterprise wi-fi solution to both the sender and receiver of information.

 

Want to learn more? If your organization is experiencing a mobility wake-up call, this short five-minute video, which explores the advantages of developing a mobile-first strategy, is tailor-made just for you. Is your wireless infrastructure ready to support your organization’s digital transformation? Find out what’s on the horizon and what you can do to prepare. Organizations often have differing wired and wireless, remote access and VPN environments, all with disparate policies; are your policies up to par? Explore five clues here: http://ow.ly/uSwl306qRZL.