Point Inside
Transforming the In-Store Shopping Experience

In the recent past, retailers did not have many opportunities to compete with the personalization and convenience provided by online shopping. Although slow to catch up with the digital revolution, retailers are starting to rethink business models and leverage technology to reinvent the in-store customer experience. As a result, firms are increasingly accessing big data and new marketing technologies to drive business decisions.

Point Inside, headquartered in Bellevue, WA, provides digital in-store solutions for top retailers to help mobile shoppers search, plan, and complete their in-store shopping trips. “We capture and generate mounds of in-store specific data, enabling retailers to understand mobile and shopper behavior, maximizing their revenue,” begins Josh Marti, CEO of Point Inside. The company is able to utilize new technology and enable their customers to take advantage of big data capabilities without any significant investment in employee training or new infrastructure. Marti relates, “Today, big data algorithms are becoming more powerful and the cost of storage is decreasing.” These advances allow businesses to make data-driven decisions and interact with consumers in various ways. “At Point Inside, we organize the data in the cloud for on-time delivery to key decision makers,” says Marti. Simultaneously, the company’s technology platform does not require identifiable customer information to provide store-specific, location-based, and contextualized experiences.

Point Inside’s platform, StoreMode™, aggregates disparate legacy data of retailers, creating a single view of each store. StoreMode is a cloud-based enterprise-grade product that empowers retailers to innovate and rapidly deploy store-specific services. StoreMode enables retailers to know the location of the products in their stores and make better product placement decisions.

In addition to maps and product location, StoreMode assists shoppers in routing shopping lists, finding deals nearby, searching for items in their local store, and other functionalities. “At Point Inside, apart from filtering, we recognize preferences and trends at each store,” explains Marti. The company also encourages the adoption of beacons and other indoor location technologies by retailers.

These technologies further enhance the functionalities of the StoreMode platform, creating an additional layer of context that can be used to personalize the in-store shopping experience.

Target integrated Point Inside’s StoreMode, enabling shoppers to search for items available in their local store as well as view the aisle and shelf location. The platform also allows shoppers to create natural language shopping lists in Target's mobile app while planning their shopping trips at home or on the go. Point Inside also maps the Black Friday deals in each store, making it easier for shoppers to plan and save.

We capture and generate mounds of fresh in-store specific data, enabling retailers to understand mobile and shopper behavior, maximizing their revenue

It is important to note that for the first time with smartphones, retailers are understanding customer behavior both inside and outside of the store, and are able to view an in-store “clickstream,” similar to analytics for the web. This new data can help the retail enterprise optimize their merchandising, store assortment, layout, and more. “We can provide a total in-store mobile solution so that retailers don’t have to involve themselves with point solutions, or build the complete platform from scratch to include capabilities like maps, product location, search, deals, recommendations, and analytics,” assures Marti.

Forging ahead with their culture of continuous innovation, Point Inside is now planning to expand its retail customer base in order to improve the in-store shopping experience for more shoppers. “We are working on new tools that can help retailers make better decisions by harnessing powerful mobile shopper data,” he concludes.