Every year thousands of trade-shows around the world showcase products and services from different industries. Anyone who has attended a tradeshow has likely worn a conference badge that identifies them. Typically, those badges have a barcode that can be scanned at different booths, demo areas, speaker sessions, and showcases.

“Tradeshow attendee badges traditionally required manual scanning but RAIN RFID enables automated data collection.”

But that experience can be awkward and unpleasant for both the person scanning the badge and the person wearing the badge. As events get busy and staff becomes engaged with multiple attendees, scanning rates degrade. Imagine the potential of an automated solution that could capture attendee activity without relying on manual scans, and that could increase data richness and accuracy, improving the overall experience.

Good news—you don’t have to imagine it! Impinj, SAP Hybris and Arvato partnered to develop and deploy a RAIN RFID-enabled tradeshow experience at SAP Hybris Live in Barcelona, Spain that automatically captures the activities of attendees who have opted-in. Participant’s badges were opted-in through a simple scan by an Impinj Indy powered device from our partner, AsReader, which linked the attendee data to the tag that was embedded in their badge. More than 2,500 badges were RAIN RFID-enabled, producing more than 400,000 data points during the two-day event. The volume of data captured, and the insights gained, herald a new generation of tradeshow experience.

“The Impinj platform captures guest movement, creating a visual experience they can interact with in real time.”

The integration built by Arvato between the Impinj platform and the SAP Hybris Galaxy Experience application allowed conference attendees to visualize their own conference journey and that of other anonymous attendees through virtual reality. With the data captured, SAP Hybris garnered strategic insights about their customers and the success of the event, while showcasing the power of IoT technologies like RAIN RFID to drive customer engagement through SAP software.

The opportunities don’t end with tradeshows. This Impinj platform uses RAIN RFID technology which can be applied anywhere that requires timely information about what people are doing—ski resorts, theme parks, and more. RAIN RFID solutions allow event hosts to use guest activity to help deliver a better experience. For example, a ski resort can identify guests as they get on lifts, or even time their run on a slope. This data can then be leveraged by the resort to mitigate bottlenecks, or let guests know where and when they can expect fast access to the mountain. In short, what we saw at SAP Hybris LIVE was only the beginning.

The SAP Hybris Galaxy Experience shows how the Impinj RAIN RFID platform can transform a humble, everyday item—like a conference badge—into a powerful tool for generating insights. I’m excited to see how events and other experience providers will integrate RAIN RFID to further improve the guest experience and delight customers.