In today’s retail landscape, smart building technology is essential to the success of brick-and-mortar stores. Like most retailers, the Cisco Store has priorities to reduce energy costs, enhance security, and create more engaging shopping experiences for customers — all in support of the bottom line. But we found ourselves wondering, how else could we improve our physical stores to keep up with our online stores?
One of the most significant advantages online stores have over physical retail has always been robust analytics and customer insights. E-commerce platforms can track every click, view, and purchase, creating detailed customer journeys and behavior patterns. Physical stores, by comparison, have traditionally operated with limited visibility into customer interactions. Bridging this analytics gap became a top priority for us at the Cisco Store. We wanted to bring that same level of data-driven decision making to our brick-and-mortar and physical locations, and so began our mission to elevate in-store analytics and customer engagement.
The Cisco Store: Where innovation meets retail
The Cisco Store is the official merchandiser for Cisco branded apparel and accessories. We operate both online and through physical retail spaces, including two permanent locations and various pop-up traveling stores that appear at Cisco Live and other industry events worldwide.
We identified an exciting opportunity to transform our physical retail spaces by harnessing the combined strengths of Cisco’s portfolio. This vision materialized as the Cisco Store Tech Lab – our innovative retail showcase environment fully powered by Cisco and partner technologies. Today, the Cisco Store Tech Lab serves as a common testing ground and customer zero for Cisco product teams’ cutting-edge innovations. As customer zero, we implement new solutions before they reach customers, testing and sharing valuable insights that help product teams refine their offerings and enhance the customer experience.
We’re continuously exploring integration possibilities across our technology stack, creating seamless connections across our solutions.
Pinpointing challenges and unlocking opportunities
To elevate our in-store analytics and customer engagement, we began by pinpointing the areas that needed improvement to drive our success and guide our transformation. This process revealed a range of challenges and opportunities that became the focus for our innovation:
- Bringing online-level analytics to physical stores: We wanted to replicate the detailed analytics available in e-commerce to our brick-and-mortar locations, particularly to track and increase store visitor-to-purchase conversions.
- Customer insights: We lacked demographic and behavioral data for in-store visitors, making it difficult to plan inventory and optimize floor layouts.
- Energy efficiency: We needed to lower the usage and costs associated with our always-on critical devices and systems.
- Security enhancements: We required better tools to quickly identify theft and the individuals involved.
- Inventory management: Planning stock levels for our traveling event-based stores was challenging due to varying shopper demographics and fluctuating foot traffic.
- Environmental controls: Better insights into store comfort factors were essential for customer satisfaction.
The technology behind the transformation
To address our challenges, we implemented a unified, intelligent solution powered by smart building technology. By integrating connected devices, sensors, and automation tools, we created a system that delivers real-time data and enables seamless, data-driven decision-making. This comprehensive approach streamlined operations while elevating the in-store experience for both customers and staff. Here’s a closer look at the solutions that make up our smart building technology:
- Meraki Smart Cameras: Provides customer insights by analyzing visitor demographics and behavior. They enhance security and optimize operations like theft prevention and inventory management.
- Meraki Sensors: Monitors energy factors like temperature and humidity to maintain store comfort, improve energy efficiency, and reduce costs by automating device schedules.
- Meraki Access Points: Delivers reliable and secure WiFi connectivity with seamless network performance, and leverages location analytics to support critical systems, optimize operations, and enhance customer engagement.
- Cisco Spaces: Leverages location-based intelligence to enhance customer experiences through personalized engagement, seamless WiFi access, and targeted promotions.
What we learned along the way
Integration wasn’t without challenges. In the very beginning, network connectivity issues and interference at events presented occasional obstacles. For example, when we initially deployed the Meraki Smart Button (MT30) automation to control the digital signage screens, it was at a travel store during an event. There was a high level of interference in the convention center that caused a noticeable delay in executing the commands, resulting in a long lag time. We collaborated closely with the Meraki sensor team and together reworked the way data was transmitted. By optimizing the communication process, we were able to reduce the command execution time to under a millisecond – a remarkable improvement.
These challenges ultimately strengthened our approach that led to a breakthrough in bringing these disparate systems together to create a cohesive ecosystem of retail intelligence for tangible results.
The outcomes and results: Measurable transformation
We set out with a bold mission: to bring the power of online-level analytics to our physical stores. We’re excited to share that we’ve not only achieved this milestone, but have also seen 40% year-over-year revenue growth. This breakthrough has unlocked transformative results across our operations:
- Enhanced customer insights: Meraki Smart Cameras, working with EveryAngle, now gathers demographic data including age, gender, and sentiment. This allows us to identify store zone conversion rates and optimize layouts, contributing to improved visitor-to-purchase conversions and revenue.
- Strengthened security and theft prevention: Our Meraki Smart Cameras have revolutionized our approach to loss prevention. Using Meraki Smart Search, we can now determine exactly when inventory went missing and identify those responsible — reducing investigation time and undetected losses.
- Improved energy efficiency: Using Meraki Sensors for power management, we’ve reduced energy consumption by a remarkable 66%, representing significant cost savings by ensuring devices are only active during store hours.
- Optimized inventory management: The combination of Meraki Smart Cameras and Cogniac automatically counts inventory and notifies staff of restocking needs, optimizing our inventory processes.
- Personalized customer engagement: Cisco Spaces, powered with location-based intelligence, enables seamless connectivity to WiFi through branded captive portals. It enhances customer engagement by delivering personalized experiences, such as targeted promotions based on customers’ presence in specific store areas. This helps drive higher engagement and boost sales conversions.
What’s next on the roadmap
Looking ahead, we’re excited about several initiatives that will further enhance our smart building technology implementation.
We’re exploring advanced AI capabilities to further personalize the shopping experience based on individual customer preferences and behaviors. This includes dynamic digital signage that adjusts messaging based on real-time demographic data from our Meraki Smart Cameras.
Additionally, we plan to expand our use of environmental sensors to not only monitor but proactively adjust store conditions for energy and cost efficiency and optimal comfort.
The transformation we’ve witnessed through our deployment of smart building technology has exceeded our expectations. What began as a practical solution to specific operational challenges has evolved into a comprehensive ecosystem that enhances every aspect of our retail operation.
In addition to smart building technology, gaining observability across our environment has been critical to our operations. Splunk has been instrumental in this success, providing observability tools that enable us to seamlessly monitor and take action on diverse data for strategic decision making. To learn more about our Splunk deployment, read the blog here.
Additional resources
Share: