reelyActive

What was the business problem?

Many enterprises including retailers, manufacturers, and warehouses need to track customers, assets, or human resources in their facilities in real time. Collected tracking data can inform improved design to optimize efficiencies and shopping experiences, and improve operational effectiveness by tracking the movements of a product throughout the manufacturing and shipping process. Real-time location systems have been available for years, but most are not easily scalable without investments in complex tracking devices.

How does your product solve this problem?

Our enterprise product, Pareto, is essentially “Google Analytics” for the real world. Pareto uses beacons to track and follow Bluetooth-enabled devices (and the people carrying them) within a specific store or location. Our software uses these data to record how the device moves within a location, such as a retail store, to provide meaningful insights that are both actionable and timely. For example, a retailer might use this data to move popular items to the back of a store to have potential consumers walk past other items that might pique their interest and prompt an additional purchase. Even though businesses can use Pareto’s own beacons and sniffers to track assets, they can also benefit from our BYOD (bring your own device) feature. Most people currently carry at least one Bluetooth-enabled device – a smartphone, smartwatch, fitness band, etc.

What technical resources did you need?

We were looking for a low-cost server in order to host our open source software. While we didn’t need a large amount of computational power, we did need a cloud hosting solution that wasn’t going to break the bank as we continued to develop our product.

Why did you choose the DAIR Cloud?

In 2014, I was mentoring someone launching a tech startup in Ottawa who was building his small business on DAIR. I was impressed with the resources offered and the zero cost associated with them. Since then we have been using DAIR for hosting our open-source platform. DAIR’s free cost model allowed us to experiment and try new things without having to worry about cloud caps and unexpected bills, while also leaving us room to experiment in a secure and robust environment.

How did the DAIR Cloud help you business?

DAIR allowed us to upload our open source API and let beta testers upload their data to explore the results. These open source packages would later become integral to our enterprise product, and our open source software became our test bed for features that we would later migrate to our enterprise platform.

What was the result?

The result has been the successful development and launch of Pareto, our enterprise platform, which has seen significant uptake in the retail industry across the country.

¹ https://cloudtweaks.com/2015/04/guide-small-business-cloud/