As a project manager or IT professional, have you ever found yourself struggling to track down where certain individuals or company assets are?
As a retail professional, or restaurant owner, have you ever wondered where your customers are spending the most time — or how you could better position objects to increase profits?
Thanks to new digital innovations and ubiquitous connectivity, it’s never been easier to keep track of people, objects, and assets using technology.
By investing in a real-time locating system (RTLS), organizations across all sectors can gain critical insight into improving business processes — while improving worker safety, delighting their customers, and growing their bottom lines because of it.
If you’re a solution partner, system integrator or application developer, there has never been a better time to start offering RTLS technology to your clients. If you don’t, you could get left behind in this ultra-competitive marketplace.
Quuppa is the global leader in real-time location systems (RTLS) technology. Headquartered in Finland, we now power over 2,000 organizations throughout the world. In this post, you will learn about what RTLS solutions are and how your business can capitalize on this rapidly growing technology.
What is a real-time locating system?
A real-time locating system (RTLS) is a technology solution that seamlessly relays the current positioning of objects, assets, tools, equipment, shipping containers, and people, using Bluetooth® technology. This functionality gives organizations immediate access to the object or entity’s location and also explains where it has been previously.
Here’s how it works: Simply stick a tag on the object you want to track and that tag then transmits real-time positioning data back to a locating system. This enables managers and employees to keep their fingers on the pulse of your operations at the exact moment, giving you more control and a deeper understanding of where things are that instant.
According to a recent study by Zion Market Research, the global market for RTLS technologies will reach $11.81 billion by 2024, up from the $2.37 billion it brought in during 2018.
In large part, this is due to the transformative power that RTLS solutions deliver to all kinds of organizations.
What are the benefits of an RTLS?
RTLS solutions deliver a number of benefits to companies across all sectors. In this section, we’ll briefly explore some of the more valuable ones.
- Increased efficiency and better staff movement – RTLS technologies enable your team to get more done more effectively in less time. Instead of having to search for objects or equipment manually, you can glance at a screen and instantly know where everything is. The technology also gives you the ability to keep track of people and makes it easier to delegate tasks to staff in the vicinity and see which folks need resources sent their way, which is especially helpful in healthcare settings. To learn more about how RTLS promises to transform Industry 4.0 companies by increasing productivity, check out this white paper.
- Protecting assets and people – With an RTLS solution in place, you’ll always know where your most important assets are, where they’ve been, and whether they need to be serviced, among other things. RTLS technology can also be used to keep track of where medical staff and patients are in clinical settings. First responders can be directed to critical areas based on knowledge of their location in emergency situations. Similarly, a field services company can use RTLS technology to assign the closest technician to an emergency job that just popped up.
- Increased safety – In addition to ensuring patients stay safe in healthcare settings, RTLS technology can also be used to improve workplace safety in other environments. For example, you might use an RTLS to prevent collisions in a warehouse setting. You can also use RTLS to implement stricter access controls. In the event an unauthorized individual enters a location they’re not allowed in at one of your facilities, you can receive automatic notifications. What’s more, RTLS can also help enforce social distancing and facilitate contact tracing in any work setting.
- More control over inventory – Many pundits believe that RTLS technology represents the future of inventory management. On one hand, you will always be able to tell what your inventory levels are at any point in time. It’s also much faster to complete customer inventory delivery, too, and take stock of what you have so that you know what you need to order. In addition to making it easier to maintain optimal inventory levels, RTLS solutions can also help you reduce operational costs, as less human effort is required to ensure you have enough inventory on hand at any given moment. While many barcoding and RFID solutions have helped automate inventory control, RTLS takes the automation farther, by providing specific, accurate location of where your inventory is located.
- Clearer understanding of your data – RTLS solutions are helping businesses seamlessly capture vast amounts of data, which in turn can be used to improve efficiency and increase profits. In retail settings, more and more organizations are turning to RTLS solutions to improve the customer experience. Not only can RTLS solutions be used to implement self-scanning checkout solutions, they can also serve as anti-theft systems for high-value assets. Learn more about how RTLS solutions are helping retail and hospitality companies get to the next level.
Ready to unlock the power of an RTLS solution?
As you begin your search for the RTLS solution that makes the most sense for your business, you’ll quickly find out that it’s a jungle out there, with so many options to consider. In order to avoid investing in something that fails to produce the results you’re expecting, you need to look for a solution that is:
- Accurate, with support for positioning accuracy down to 10 centimeters and the ability to provide real-time location updates for the fastest-moving objects in the most challenging environments
- Open, with the option to design your own tags, and run the software locally, or in the cloud
- Scalable, with the ability to track thousands of items in multiple, large spaces
- Practical, with a versatile, open design that gives you the flexibility you need to pinpoint positioning, proximity, or presence detection, depending on your use case
If you’re looking to learn more about the business benefits of offering RTLS solutions to your customers—and how Quuppa’s technology is uniquely positioned to help companies like yours get to the next level—stop by Quuppa’s upcoming virtual event, Location Innovation, which takes place online on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16, 2020.
The action-packed online event features keynotes from Jim Katsandres, the director of developer relations at Bluetooth®, and Roman Ryabkov, the CEO of Sport Telematics.
For more information or to register for the event, check this out.
