Vibenomics partners with Lexmark to help retailers provide the right background—and increase their revenue
Learn how an advertising company monitors device connectivity, remotely pushes updates, and views and acts on issues in real time.
If you’ve ever found yourself enjoying the vibe of perusing the cereal aisle while a classic 90’s ballad plays over the grocery speaker system, you may have a Lexmark customer to thank. Vibenomics, a Lexmark partner, helps businesses increase their sales by enriching the shopper experience through targeted advertisements, moodsetting background music and timely store announcements. This is a location-based Audio Out-of-Home advertising company on a mission to help brands across the U.S. communicate with their customers while they shop through handcrafted, storespecialized playlists.
Customized services require customized technology
Vibenomics was founded in 2017 and began deploying services to retailers using consumer-grade tablets, connected to the retailer’s network. The platform was complex, unreliable, not customizable and took many hours to install. The technology, which relied on keeping batteries charged and connecting to Wi-Fi or using cellular data, often failed, adding unnecessary strain on server resources. Vibenomics needed an enterprise class platform designed to help their business succeed and scale.
Additionally, managing these mobile devices across the country was proving to be an even bigger barrier to Vibenomics’ mission of helping brands engage with their customers. Consumer-grade tablets are a physical security and data security problem; Vibenomics needed something suited for an enterprise. These tablets also require frequent updates to run applications properly, and if an update is missed, Vibenomics team members would have to spend valuable time digging through device logs to locate and manually implement the failed update.
While this initial system got Vibenomics up and running, they knew there had to be a better way to serve their clients. Then they discovered Lexmark Optra IoT Solutions with a user-friendly interface that made it easy to deploy and manage their applications and devices remotely, saving the cost of deploying Vibenomics personnel onsite or looking through device logs.
Lexmark Optra closes the gap
Lexmark Optra solutions optimize operational efficiency, streamlining device management with real-time communication. Using our IoT technology and tailoring it to meet the specific business needs of Vibenomics, Lexmark provided a branded device, formatted for retail use and loaded with a management portal designed to help them monitor and manage these devices remotely and securely. This consolidated portal allows the Network Operations team to visualize a device’s connectivity, push updates, track devices per customer on a map and view reported issues.
“The Optra Edge platform has saved us at least 50% in total lifetime costs and reduced our deployment time from 6 hours to around 15 minutes compared to our previous hardware and application management platform.”
Chris Keaney
Chief Technology Officer
Lexmark engineers worked with Vibenomics’ needs in mind
Vibenomics needed a scalable, hardwired, secure and affordable platform that would meet the requirements of its growing enterprise client base. Optra Edge has been designed to do just that. Consistently.
According to Chief Operating Officer Marty Draper, after reviewing uptime for the Optra platform versus their previous system, uptimes for the Optra platform registered 100 to 99% versus anywhere from 76 to 95% for the prior consumer-grade platform.
“The Optra platform works much better than any of the solutions that we looked at in the market,” Chief Technology Officer Chris Keaney said. “The entire platform is superior in device management capabilities. It’s deterministic, its reporting is in realtime. It took us about six hours to fully get our legacy platform to deploy to devices in the field, and it takes us 15 minutes to do it with Optra.”.
Partnering with Lexmark helps you help your customers
For the end customer, the fact that this all runs on an edge device enables Vibenomics to provide unique sales insights and performance data, customized to each brand’s campaign needs.
For the startup company, cash is king
Companies of all sizes are using extra caution in where they spend their resources. Especially for startups, financial resources are often even more limited and viewing things through that lens is critical for the success and longevity of a growing company. Employing Optra Edge allowed for a greater financial sum to be redistributed to other company needs. By partnering with Lexmark, Vibenomics was able to save time and money and saving time and money is a total vibe.
Vibenomics was created with a simple focus – to help retail businesses control a vibe that will drive their business economics.
As the nation’s premier Audio Experience Solution provider, Vibenomics helps businesses enhance sales and enrich the customer experience through licensed background music playlists, professional voice announcements, and targeted Audio Out-Of-Home advertisements.
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