The Brain, the solution to empower your physical space

The transformation of physical spaces has accelerated profoundly over the last few years, with technology taking on a leading role. Solutions such as The Brain platform, we have developed internally at Telefónica Tech, enable and facilitate this transformation, helping companies to achieve gains in efficiency, sustainability, knowledge and customer experience, including the phygital concept (bringing together the physical and digital worlds) in their physical spaces.

We can identify 5 main lines of action for retailers, focusing on the physical retail space:

• Be more phygital, uniting the online and physical space to meet the expectations of the new consumer with an optimal shopping experience in all its sales channels. It is a twist to the old omnichannel, allowing more options to the customer, such as starting the purchase at home, recovering the cart in the physical store, but not finishing the purchase at that moment and then returning to finish it at home, etcetera.
• Improving the knowledge of the customer and their habits to maximize the visit and make strategic decisions that improve business results, having better data means being able to make better decisions. And with the data we are collecting we can then use them to make decisions that affect the following points that we are going to discuss as challenges.
• Improving the customer experience at points of sale, as the importance of the physical store is reinforced. A customer who enjoys a differential and pleasant experience at a point of sale will become loyal to the brand and will return to the store to make more purchases.
• Efficiency is key for retailers in a context of inflation and high prices, as this efficiency will allow us to gain margin points in the sale of products. If we focus on personnel management, improving efficiency in daily processes and tasks allows employees to focus on what brings value to the business.
• Sustainability is one of the key points nowadays due to the increase in energy prices and the higher costs that this implies for a physical space; as well as the need to reduce the impact of the carbon footprint. Positioning in sustainability is important for companies, consumers demand transparency and value the most sustainable brands.

What is The Brain?

The Brain is a platform developed by Telefónica Tech that allows you to digitalize your physical space through several integrated solutions, dynamic marketing, musical ambience, indoor insights. and proximity marketing.

The Brain connects all these products to obtain an integral vision including monitoring, operation, content management, dahsboards and generate actionability through its rules engine.

The main differential value of The Brain is to enable actionability between the different integrated solutions and to offer the possibility of integrating external data sources that can also be used as part of the actionability to enrich the complexity and versatility of the rules.

The actionability can be between the own elements that Telefónica Tech offers in its projects as in systems that the customer already has deployed, for example lighting systems to perform synchronized effects depending on the customer experience that is taking place in the space (video, audio and the like), and also to provide the possibility to integrate external data sources that can also be used as part of the actionability).

The modular architecture and the integration APIs also allow the indicators and data that are in The Brain to be integrated with BI systems (Business Intelligence, which are systems that collect and analyze all the information related to the business) that the client already has or in data lakes (centralized repositories of information), for its subsequent exploitation.

The platform will allow you to segment based on the criteria you need users, roles, geographic, business, etc. to enable you to manage different experiences in each point of service that you have installed in The Brain.

The Brain from Telefónica Tech enhances customer experiences, while improving efficiency and sustainability.

A platform that grows with your needs

The Brain is a platform that is ready to grow and evolve as your needs change; you don't need to contract all the products from the beginning, just contract what you need and from there you can grow in number of licenses or add products in a simple way.

The architecture design allows you to scale the platform in real time, depending on the demand to manage the growth of traffic and devices automatically. The platform has secure APIs that allow other systems to interact with the platform, thus achieving interoperability between existing systems and those deployed at the client.

We develop an annual product roadmap that allows us to evolve based on market trends, customer needs and our experience in marketing this type of solutions for more than 15 years. The roadmap is flexible enough to adapt to special projects that may arise.

Transforming physical spaces is being driven by technology.

AI and predictive modeling

The speed at which AI evolves is vertiginous and it is a challenge for organizations to keep up with trends and changes; as well as to decide the best use cases to apply the technology and respond to the challenges indicated.

Telefónica Tech has professionals and partners specialized in the field of AI and Big Data, being able to integrate this expertise in the development of the platform to offer advanced functionalities.

Therefore, we have video analytics solutions integrated in The Brain that make use of AI in real time to obtain KPIs about the users of the spaces or measure the impact and audiences of your advertising content on dynamic marketing screens, which will allow you to define communication strategies adapted to the profile of your customers, with a better conversion rate, impact, and brand recall.

Our predictive models for the influx of people to the physical space take into account nearby events or the weather among many variables so you can plan the demand and be more efficient in the use of staff and the provisioning of products.

Making strategic decisions requires a better understanding of customer habits and knowledge.

Areas of application

The Brain will help you transform your physical space, in the retail, banking, and distribution sectors; among others. It will allow you to program and broadcast dynamic marketing campaigns segmented according to the business criteria you require, play music ambience channels and audio spots, know the behavior of your customers in the space; know how they move, how long they spend in each of the areas of the store, average waiting times in the cashier or customer service areas, and more KPIs.

■ You will also be able to know the expected footfall in your space through the predictive funnel model, which will allow you to schedule staff shifts more efficiently.

Therefore, you will be able to make decisions that respond to the industry challenges we listed at the beginning of the post.

The Brain also has application in other sectors such as offices to manage corporate communication, tourism offices, customer service or museums where the knowledge of the user and the experience offered to it are of vital importance.

Telefónica Tech offers the design, consulting, implementation, and maintenance of digital transformation projects of spaces, using The Brain as a fundamental piece, to help our clients to solve the challenges they are facing.