Internet of Things (IoT) Example: Retail Membership Card

This video gives an example for how to use AgilePoint NX to create an application that uses IoT (Internet of Things). In this Retail Membership Card Discount Management demo, a barcode scanner is attached to Raspberry PI device to scan a store membership card, and stream it to AgilePoint NX with Microsoft Azure IoT to get personalized discounts delivered to customers while they are shopping in the store.

Video: Retail Membership Card

Embedding for the video for this example is not available at this time. To view the video, refer to http://agilepointnxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Retail-Webcam-IOT.mp4

Business Problem

All retail stores give membership cards to their customers to give them some discounts. Most of these stores store the purchase history of the clients in back end system or CRM system. However, other coupons are issued by them in form of a booklet that is mailed to the home address of the customer. Most of the items listed in the booklet are not of great interest to the buyer. The pre-printed booklets do not maximize the upselling potential for retailers or lure customer to shop at the store. The customers do not feel they get a personalized experience when shopping in the store, and it is difficult to keep their loyalty.

Solution

  • Coupons are issued to customers based on their buying histories.
  • Buying histories are stored in customer profiles in a CRM system.
  • Coupons are sent to user through SMS while shopping in the store.
  • These actions increase the chance that customers buy items compared to pre-printed booklet with unrelated products. The customer in the store gets a personalized experience, and wants to go back to the store to discover hidden discounts. Customers may buy new items while in the store if good discounts are available that they might not have bought otherwise.

Process Overview

  1. The user walks into the store and scans his membership card with a barcode scanner.
  2. The barcode scanner scans the barcode and initiates an AgilePoint NX application, and the barcode is passed as a parameter.
  3. The BPM process reads the user profile and previous shopping history of the user from Salesforce and aggregate the categories of the items and brand that has been buying.
  4. The process retrieves special in-store discount coupons that can be sent to the customer while he or she is shopping in the store.
  5. The application sends the coupons with itemized discount codes to the customer in SMS messages.

Technologies

  • Software:
    • AgilePoint - App Builder capabilities.
    • Microsoft Azure IoT Hub - Handles the streaming of events that come from the webcam and Raspberry PI.
    • Salesforce -Provides customer relationship management and invoicing. You could also use a different CRM system.
  • Hardware:
    • Raspberry PI
    • Webcam - Scans the barcode on the user's membership card. You can also do this with facial recognition or barcode scanner.