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What Happened to Euclid Analytics?

In today’s world, technology seems to be growing exponentially. It exists at the center of our lives in so many ways. For years, businesses have diligently tried to understand consumer needs. They strove to know what we wanted before we even knew we wanted it.

Small businesses wasted countless hours and money trying to guess what customers wanted. They often tried a trial-and-error approach to marketing, staffing, and inventory management.

Even as time went by, and their data got better, there were still huge gaps. Without any actual data about customer patterns, it was difficult to make knowledgeable assumptions about the future.

Until recently, a detailed market analysis was often only the purview of large businesses. With the expanded use of mobile phones, even small businesses can now get in on the act. That is where a company like Euclid Analytics comes in.

What Euclid Analytics Does

At its heart, Euclid Analytics is a unique analytics platform. Their product aims to track the use of wifi signals by mobile phones. It then takes that data to show how customers behave within a specific physical space. Gathering this data can help retailers learn more about customer behavior while shopping.

To use Euclid Analytics retailers must make an investment in hardware. They need access points in their retail location. The larger the location, the more they will need. These access points would then track the customer’s phones via wifi.

An intriguing case study of the power of Euclid Analytics was Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores. This company approached Euclid Analytics to learn more about their customers.

They already had a good handle on the demographics of their customers. What they wanted now was to learn about their behavior. They then wanted to send targeted, precise messaging to those customers.

Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft went to great lengths to let customers know about their free in-store wifi. They did this through both in-store signage and word-of-mouth through their employees.

Customers were required to provide an email address to sign in. Once complete, they received some type of discount offer. At that point, Jo-Ann could now track how long the customer was in the store. They could also track whether that customer made a purchase.

Now they could build a plan on a customer-by-customer basis or on a much larger scale. Jo-Ann estimated that this finely-tuned marketing increased store visits by two to six times.

What this data also showed Jo-Ann was that in-store purchases need not be the only goal. They began to see that their stores could be a product showcase.

The growth of online shopping is taking a bite out of brick-and-mortar stores. That means these stores need to embrace their online storefront presence. What Jo-Ann learned is that it did not matter where customers made purchases.

If it happened on a store visit, that was great. Customers may also view products in-store and then purchase online. Those online purchases might even occur while they were in the store!

The ability to track all this behavior is at the heart of Euclid Analytics. If customers used the same email address for signing into the store wifi and online purchases, Jo-Ann could tie them together.

So from there, the next step would be to track the phones by the owner. This may pose privacy concerns. Most phone users have MAC addressed mobile devices. This would provide ample opportunity to track individuals.

Euclid Analytics implied that this would not happen in their software. The only way it would is if customers opted-in to tracking. It would seem most would not, unless there was some perk associated with the choice. Thus the perk that Jo-Ann offered for signing up.

Most consumers are aware that there is a fine line between privacy and data collection. This line is becoming even thinner as technology like this grows.

One way to think of Euclid Analytics is that it is akin to Google Analytics. The difference is that while Google Analytics tracks website usage, Euclid Analytics tracks human behavior.

In the past, the tracking of customer data was somewhat remedial and straightforward. A retailer would count how many people came into the store and then track transaction data. Euclid Analytics wanted to take that a step further. They wanted to take much more detailed data and let retailers use that to focus on customer analytics and retention.

Euclid Analytics offers business owners a wide range of data. It can track the number of people entering a store. It can then track how they behave down to what isles they visit in a retail space.

There are concerns about a product like Euclid Analytics. One is the fact that customers may be unaware of tracking occurring. Today privacy is becoming a more significant concern for consumers. The lack of transparency of Euclid Analytics might be troubling for some.

How A Business Might Use Euclid Analytics

A product like Euclid Analytics can be beneficial for retailers of all kinds. Whether they are a standalone location or exist across several locations. The power of Euclid Analytics impacts both revenue and expense.

Retailers want to know what products and services are essential to them. So important that they will spend their hard-earned money on them. Euclid Analytics would take that a step further.

If most customers bought product “A” right after they purchased product “B,” that was valuable to know. This was information that retailers could not gather from simple sales reports. This detail was at the heart of the program. It was not only what to offer, but how to make the offer.

Euclid Analytics also aims to impact the expense side as well. When retailers have detailed information about customer patterns, retailers can make more detailed expense choices. Items like staffing and inventory management could be much more precise with this type of buying information.

The real point of all of this is for retailers to move away from trial-and-error. When a store has a sale and its sales volume increases, that is great. The problem is that it can be hard to understand why it increased. Was it because of the sale or some other unrelated reason? Euclid Analytics proposes to remove that uncertainty.

Once a retailer has that data, predicting future outcomes becomes that much easier. Now when they run another sale, they can better predict the results.

Euclid Analytics could also help retailers maximize their conversion rates. When retailers are guessing at outcomes, it isn’t very easy to know how to market. So if a retailer knows more about the customer they are targeting, it is easier to market to them.

The Buyout Of Euclid Analytics

Euclid Analytics has created a unique place in the tech sector. It was no wonder that there was interest from larger companies in this niche. That is where WeWork enters the picture.

In 2019, WeWork acquired Euclid Analytics. This was a sign that WeWork was branching out. Their original business model was selling memberships in co-working spaces. Spaces that allow small businesses to have all the benefits of a large corporate space. All at a fraction of the cost for the small business.

Now WeWork was getting into the software business. They were already offering a service to businesses. Now they seemed to be looking to provide something for them that was entirely different.

The next question from consumers was how WeWork was going to use and market Euclid Analytics. There seemed to be no doubt that Euclid Analytics was a popular business solution. As such, WeWork would continue and expand that offering.

This expansion centered around branding Euclid Analytics in a way that mirrored WeWork. The primary thought was that the software would allow any company to operate as WeWork does. They proposed to take the retail data of Euclid Analytics and use it in the workplace.

So the idea would be to sell this both to those that rent WeWork spaces, but those that do not as well. So in a typical WeWork space, the software would let users know when a conference room was in use. Euclid Analytics would also tell them how many people came into that conference room, for example.

So it is easy to see why a company may find this information valuable. Retailers want to know customer trends. Employers want to know how their employees work.

WeWork was selling this idea by going one step further. Shiva Rajaraman, WeWork’s’ chief product officer, put it like this: “Our goal is to help enterprises create the most efficient, effective, and engaged workplaces for their employees.”

WeWork was not selling this as data gathering alone. They seemed to want to move beyond making a workplace more efficient. They proposed to optimize workspaces. This would be good not only for the company, but employees as well.

When employees are more engaged, they would enjoy their work more. With less time spent doing menial or redundant tasks, employees would spend more time doing things that were stimulating and engaging.

As with the customers in a store feeling uneasy about tracking, employees could feel the same way. WeWork’s response to this seemed to be that this is general data.

They do not want to surveil anyone. They do not propose to track any one employee. Their purpose was to provide general data. The kind of data that could highlight trends and lead to greater efficiency.

To make customers feel better about this, WeWork tested this on themselves first. They tried to use this software to lead to greater efficiencies in their own company.

What Happens Next?

Euclid Analytics clearly offers a great deal of information to businesses. That said, it comes with concerns. Those concerns are especially troublesome for those that the system tracks.

Add in a company like WeWork to the equation. Now those concerns can grow exponentially. Given their size and the type of work they do, WeWork leveraging Euclid Analytics may be a mixed blessing.

Putting those concerns aside, the potential for businesses of all kids seems to be limitless. So long as the ability to opt-in or out of the tracking remains, privacy concerns can be allayed.

When contemplating all that Euclid Analytics offers across so many fields, it is easy to see the value this technology offers. Euclid Analytics will continue to offer a unique data set that will benefit practically any type of business.