The bigger your business becomes the costlier it will be to run, even more so if you’re not leading a team of remote magicians, but a high-occupancy building. While managing visitor traffic, staff, and other operations can consume a lot of time, there’s an even bigger monster hidden in plain sight: the avoidable, unnecessary costs that could save you big bucks over the long run.

We don’t mean the snacks or the free drinks you provide to boost the team morale. The real hidden costs are usually an unoptimized workforce, as well as HVAC and lighting systems. Keep in mind that diving blindly into reducing costs in high-occupancy buildings can lead to disastrous results and the result can easily backfire. Without actionable and factual data, the decisions you make can impact the quality of your products and your staff. If you’re running a brick-and-mortar business, you may even face harsher results as you risk leaving your customers unsatisfied with your services. 

Should such a simple task become such a burden? Of course not. Investing in the right technology —and solutions bundled with that— can help you save both money and time while improving the quality of your services and the satisfaction of both your customers and teammates. People counting is one of the best technologies out there for reducing building operating costs, and it’s just a side benefit. You gain valuable and actionable insights alongside accurate and factual data about your establishment and how it’s performing. 

In this article, we’ll talk about how the right people counting technology and online visitor analytics tool can help you reduce your building and operating costs, improve customer experience, and optimize your workforce and other resources. Opting for a modern and reliable traffic counter is crucial to understand your company’s financial health and future. 

What is People Counting? 

People counters are sensors that count the number of people entering or exiting defined spaces. There are lots of different technologies in play here, but the most modern and by far the most accurate one is 3D active stereo technology. Only a few top-tier tech brands like V-Count use this technology and offer the most precise people counting solutions. This technology allows traffic counters to count visitors in complete darkness or even under hardy weather conditions.

While purely counting visitors going in and out of your establishment won’t directly benefit your business in reducing costs, solutions tied to accurate people counting will. However, at its core, your people counter should be able to provide you with precise and factual data, otherwise, you’re prone to making mistakes. Making key decisions based on inaccurate or distorted data can put your business behind the competition rather than help with it. 

Once you nail down the core, which is nearly 100% accurate people counting, comes the right online analytics tool to process this data and turn it into actionable insights and easy-to-understand charts and graphics. The visitor analytics tool should be user-friendly and display how your establishment is performing across key metrics that matter specifically to your business, meaning it should be customizable. It should also allow you to make comparisons with other stores, provided you’re running more than one. G

Let’s say you already have the right people counting sensors and the visitor analytics tool at your fingertips, what now?

Reduce Costs with Real-Time Occupancy

Anonymously tracking and managing visitor traffic can be used in a number of ways to improve your business’s overall performance and guest experience, but we’re solely going to focus on how it can help to cut down costs where necessary.

When you know the peak hours and the reasons behind them, you can allocate your staff accordingly, optimize your workforce, and make schedules based on the specific time periods that you need help with. You can use real-time occupancy information to find out exactly how much workforce your establishment requires to run the best, or redirect resources to where they’re needed. The fewer heads you have around when they’re not needed the less you’ll have to pay, both for the workforce and utilities. 

Reduce Costs with Zone Analytics

Modern traffic counters come with a number of solutions that are great for diving into specifics and finding out more about your store than ever. A solution that’s undeniably good for cutting down costs and saving energy is zone analytics and everything that comes with it. 

If your people counter provider has zone analytics, you can leverage it to understand which parts of your establishment are thriving and which areas don’t. You can then use the zone analytics data with other reports and understand why a specific zone is doing well and outperforming others, or why some zones just don’t attract people. 

Once you identify unpopular areas in your building, you can reduce the costs of HVAC and lighting systems. The alternative is to use this information to make these areas livelier as well, but you now know where you’re spending significant amounts of energy that can be eliminated, saving you a great deal of money. 

Reduce Costs with Automated Systems

Automated systems are great, especially if you’re managing a smart building, but they aren’t alternatives to people counting. If anything, it’s the opposite as they complete one another.

You need accurate, reliable, and factual traffic data to know when you should power up your lights and HVAC systems, as well as which zones or rooms. You can guess it and deal with the endless repercussions, or base your decisions on facts about your business, employees, and customers and leverage what people counters bring to the table.

Suppose you own a luxury store, or an establishment that relies on keeping the lights on to attract customers, then automated lights (with people sensors) can be your worst enemy. Nothing worse than implying your store is closed or about to close down, and driving potential customers away.  No matter which automated system you’re looking at, people counters and visitor analytics go hand-in-hand with them. 

Reduce Costs with Queue Management

Shopping is a fun experience, but waiting in never-ending long queues isn’t part of that fun. As a retailer, one of your main goals is to eliminate long lines and improve visitor experience across your store/stores. The fewer people waiting in lines means the happier your customers are, and improved visitor experience leads to loyal and returning customers. 

That great benefit aside, having the knowledge of how many active checkouts you need at any given time is a lifesaver, and obviously, since it allows you to optimize your staff, it can also help you reduce unnecessary operational costs.

Several studies suggest retailers can experience up to 45% revenue loss due to long lines and customers leaving without making a purchase. A well-utilized people counting solution will make you earn by spending less.

If you want to reduce building management costs, save energy, time, and money and maximize your revenue, get in touch with us now and we’ll get you connected with one of our people counting experts to help you get started.