Now you have Retail Intelligence technology which can predict the number of customers likely to enter a store at a given time.

"We use through traffic in the store and match that against traditional retail variables," he says.
"Those are things such as how long it takes the average person to get through a store, or what's the average transaction, the sorts of things they can get from their point-of-sale system."

From the retailer's point of view, the system promises more efficient use of staff and increased productivity. It uses sensors in the ceiling to detect inward and outward traffic.

The store's service manager has a computer screen displaying two numbers, one the number of staff the store thinks it will need, and the other a plus or minus figure supplied by the Beonic software that tells the manager if more or less staff are needed.

Called QEW, the Queue Early Warning system uses Beonic’s advanced people counting sensors to track visitor traffic within large department stores or supermarkets while the system’s smart analytic software gives advance warning before queues begin to form.

Beonic’s breakthrough is the absolute simplicity of this system. Although it uses sophisticated calculations to estimate visitor movements, the system displays only two numbers to store managers. One is the number of employees rostered for cash register operation and the other is the number of extra cash register operators needed to meet anticipated customer demand.