Expleo innovates to enhance visitor experience at National Museums NI

Expleo, the technology partner for innovative companies, has announced details of its partnership with National Museums NI to help the museum group gain a better picture of the visitor journey at the Ulster Museum.

After assessing National Museums NI’s goal to develop a more visitor-centric experience through digital transformation, Expleo has helped National Museums NI harness Wi-Fi data being routinely generated to inform the flow of visitors around the Ulster Museum.

Over a three-month test period pre-pandemic, Expleo helped National Museums NI gain a sharper understanding of user journeys through the Ulster Museum, exploring visitor flow and dwell times. Information about the test being carried out was on display in the Museum. The test used anonymised data and visitors had the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out by turning their Wi-Fi on or off. Once aggregated and viewed through the lens of process automation, the data provided insights on how visitors used the museum.

Expleo used a ‘Design Thinking’ approach to drive the collaboration. The remit of the partnership also facilitate the sharing of anonymised data with Tourism NI while upholding full compliance with GDPR legislation. The Wi-Fi data, which is difficult to interpret when in raw form, was extracted, transformed and loaded into Expleo’s secure, scalable intelligence portal QIP in less than one month – demonstrating Expleo’s process automation capabilities via Python.

The news comes on the back of Expleo’s recent announcement to create 100 new jobs by 2023 in its Belfast office. The company is actively recruiting for roles in AI, Robotics, Quality Engineering, Project Management and Business Agility.

Andrew Bruce, Head of Delivery NI, Expleo Group said: “Amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, there has been a tangible acceleration in the deployment of breakthrough technologies at an enterprise level. As the experience economy gets back up and running, expect to see a similar pattern among cultural projects and tourism venues. Powering this trend is a growing awareness around how these innovations can help enhance service delivery and user experience.

Expleo is firmly committed to giving enterprises the tools to embark on a rich phase of tech-driven exploration. Our partnership with National Museums NI showcases how digital transformation can make a positive impact.”

Colin Catney, Chief Operating Officer, National Museums NI, said: “Pre-pandemic, we had identified Wi-Fi data as a source of valuable intelligence. However the data we held was in raw form and we could not decode it for strategic insight gains. Addressing this, Expleo quickly developed a strategy to put this untapped data to work securely and established a clear framework for gaining insight which will strengthen our data collation and interpretation capabilities going forward.”

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