Info share set-up is ‘Outstanding’
APARTNERSHIP set up to promote knowledge sharing between academia and industry has been graded at the highest rating of ‘Outstanding’ by Innovate UK, the Government agency that drives science and technology innovations to grow the UK economy.
Edge Hill University worked with Business Insight 3 (Bi3), a company that provides hardware and software solutions to the security and retail sectors, on a project designed to improve the quality of customer data generated by in-store sensor devices.
Mark Anderson, Professor in Computing and Information Systems at Edge Hill, was instrumental in the project.
He said: “Bi3 work with a range of hardware devices that use the latest technology, such as facial recognition, video analytics and demographic analysis, to give retailers accurate information about customer experience in their stores.
“These devices monitor the people coming into stores, from tracking their direction through the doors to providing demographic information like age, gender, etc that can be used to determine trends and provide valuable information to retailers to help deliver an improved customer experience in store.
“The problem for retailers is that they use multiple devices and software that don’t communicate with each other, so they have to interpret each device’s output separately which is complicated, time-consuming and doesn’t always give a coherent picture.”
Bi3 approached Edge Hill’s computing experts to help them address this problem and a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) was set up to work on a software solution that would integrate multiple devices into a single reporting system.
Computing graduate Joe Bolton was employed as the KTP Associate, working full-time on the project as the company’s software developer.
The system he developed during that time has the ability to collate information from a number of devices and convert it into a common format which can be presented visually on a website as easy to read charts.
The KTP has brought significant benefits to both Bi3 and Edge Hill.
Bi3 has a new product to offer clients that enables it to compete in a new business area, while the project has generated three conference papers and a journal article for Edge Hill researchers.
It has also led to full-time, permanent employment for former student Joe, and paved the way for two further projects and other student opportunities working alongside Bi3.
The results of the partnership were so impressive that it was graded ‘Outstanding’ by Innovate UK and is shortlisted to be featured as one of the top 250 KTP case studies on its website. In addition, Bi3 has been nominated for Innovate UK’s SME Innovation Awards 2016.