Is indoor mapping set to emerge as the anchor for contextually relevant and timely information?

IN-DEPTH: Josh Marti, CEO of Point Inside on major challenges associated with indoor location and mapping
By Ritesh Gupta

With the rise of accurate indoor positioning solutions and the access to indoor maps, coupled with the widespread adoption of smartphones, the indoor location space is expected to really take off.

The current sentiments portray a bright picture. As new technologies become available for indoor location and mapping providers begin to commercialise their systems, the dawn of the indoor location application is here.

Start-ups in this space, too, indicate that the marketplace is making steady progress.

“Ninety percent of our time is spent indoors, primarily at work or at home, where there is easy access to a computer.  From that perspective, the phenomenal growth of online shopping and commerce over the last 10 years seems entirely predictable.  Now, with mobile, we’re seeing the same types of trends developing,” says Josh Marti, CEO of Point Inside.

Marti added, “Now you’ve got a computer with you always, and in fact, you’ll likely see mobile grabbing more and more “share” of people’s time spent on the web.  And, just as search, browse and maps became inherent to the web experience, we’re seeing the same shift in mobile. Thus we see a huge opportunity for indoor mapping to act as the anchor for contextually relevant and timely information across a broad range of venues, applications and use cases.”

For its part, Point Inside, too, has faced quite a few challenges. Founded in 2008 and based just outside of Seattle, Washington, the company is led by a team of executives with decades of experience developing mobile and Location Based Services (LBS) applications.

Marti, who is scheduled to speak at the Ubiquitous Location and Positioning Technologies to be held on June 21-22 in Chicago, spoke to TheWhereBusiness’ Correspondent Ritesh Gupta.

For a company, which is focusing on mapping the indoor world, how would you reflect upon the last six months and assess the journey for Point Inside?

JM: Frankly, six months ago Point Inside was struggling to find its “voice”.  Because this space is so new, it’s taken a while to find the right way to educate potential partners about what we have to offer and its value, but now we feel they’re finally starting to “get it”.  And in fact, we’ve come to realise that indoor mapping is really just the starting point for being able to provide truly valuable indoor LBS services that benefit both the consumer and the retailer or venue.

Fast forward six months, and now Point Inside’s Destination Content Platform brings all the benefits of online (search, browse and maps) to mobile for the bricks and mortar world.

Considering the spate of tie-ups or new features/apps that your company has been involved in, what would you consider to be the major developments for your company? Also, how do you think the same have created new benchmarks for the industry?

JM: The major developments for Point Inside have been the creation of two primary ways our customers can take advantage of our platform and content. 

First, by creating an easy-to-implement API, customers like Continental Airlines and General Growth Properties can incorporate Point Inside indoor maps into their own mobile apps. 

Second, by creating a platform that can take real-time data feeds and “mapify” the data, our partners like Meijer can provide their customers with the ability to find items within a four-foot section of shelf space.  As far as we’re aware, both of these capabilities are unique to the industry.

What according to you is the key to delivering a premium experience to consumers by providing helpful, context-relevant information on demand? How do you think Point Inside is playing its part through its mobile destination content platform?

JM: The key to providing a premium experience is to provide accurate data in an easy-to-use fashion. 

Point Inside’s platform allows each of our partners to determine exactly what that experience is based on their own needs.  We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach; each partner can determine what information enables their customers’ desired experience, and how they want to display it.  For instance, our mobile app development team is using the platform to deliver timely and contextually-relevant deal information in the next release in order to provide a premium experience for our shoppers and travelers.

Can you provide an insight into the current issues that industry needs to look at in order to capitalise on the potential of indoor location and mapping? What are the major challenges associated with indoor location and mapping?

JM: One of the issues today, of course, is the lack of the automated, relatively precise, positioning we’ve come to expect in the outdoor world. 

I’m confident we’ll get there, though, and when we do it will provide an enhanced experience that will benefit the end user.  It will also provide retailers more and better opportunities to interact with consumers in a meaningful and contextually-relevant way.  So, there’s a technical challenge to putting the technology in place to provide the desired location precision, but there’s also an education that has to happen once it’s available. Retailers, venue owners, or others who want to take advantage of the technology will have to experiment and learn the best ways to use the capabilities to provide real value to their customers.     

Last October, when Continental released its new iPhone App it mentioned that the marrying of ‘what’ to ‘where’ enables app users to quickly find what they need at the airport. How do you think consumers are showing signs of benefitting from addition of context of location to each item or PoI? What have been the early indicators in terms of utility/ user-friendliness?

JM: The best part of this business is the feedback we receive from our users.  We get hundreds of messages a month and most are positive.  It’s clear that people are using the application in different ways.  For instance, there seem to be three types of travellers who use the Point Inside app. While they may not define themselves by these personas, based on their feedback we tend to categorise them this way.

·          The gate hugger travellers hover around the gate afraid to explore.  With the app they are more confident in how far they can go without missing their flight.
·          The unfamiliar traveller uses the app at home, in the taxi and on the plane to navigate every aspect of the airport, from finding the best cup of coffee, to browsing for the available restaurants, to finding alternative security lines.
·          The last on the plane traveller lives life on the edge and uses the app to make the impossible possible and execute the perfect 15 minute layover.

For shoppers, the primary way we see people using the app is to plan their trip to the venue (parking, store destinations, etc). While they’re at the venue, its clear users are interested in viewing promotions, finding stores, restaurants and services, and quite frankly, locating themselves.   

In the recent past it has been highlighted that NFC has the potential to be the socially-aware champion for geo-location services and enable micro-location and enable indoor LBS on a mass scale. What do you make of this observation?

JM: While we believe NFC has potential in the long run to add additional precision and greater availability of micro-location, because it will require additional deployment of stand-alone sensors, it won’t be a near-term panacea.  Instead, we believe indoor LBS will be driven in the short run by improved handset-based hardware (sensors) and software, enabled by the increased processing power now available.  

What’s on your agenda for this year?

JM: First, it’s safe to assume we’ll continue to add to our industry-leading database of maps, expanding not only the number of maps we make available, but also the number of venue types and the platforms on which we make the maps available. 

Second, through a ground-breaking project with ClearChannel airports, the Point Inside Destination Content Platform is now powering kiosks at the Cleveland Airport, providing maps with detailed point of interest information, in addition to point-to-point indoor navigation.  It only makes sense to extend the same functionality to mobile. 

Third, we’re likely to ride the tailwinds of other companies in the space by providing time sensitive deals and deeper, richer retail experiences.

Ubiquitous Location and Positioning Technologies

Josh Marti is scheduled to speak at the Ubiquitous Location and Positioning Technologies to be held on  June 21-22 in Chicago.

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Naomi Hands
VP North America
TheWhereBusiness
Tel: +44 (0) 207 375 7513
naomi@thewherebusiness.com