A smart network evolves traditional networking from a simple utility into a strategic business asset. By layering powerful analytics over a robust connectivity solution, it provides the insights needed to monitor activity, protect assets, and make data-driven decisions that enhance performance. More than just basic internet access, it's a foundation for growth.
What Makes a Network 'Smart'?
A modern smart network solution is typically a combination of three core networking areas: Network as a Service, Wireless as a Service, and SD-WAN.
Network as a Service (NaaS) is a full solution covering your internet connectivity, firewalling, routing, and switching.
Wireless as a Service (WaaS) is a wireless network solution that can be integrated into your existing environment.
Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) brings you speedy, secure, and private internet connectivity.
The "smart" component comes from making the performance and usage analytics—which are usually inaccessible with other providers—visible and actionable.
Deriving Insights from Your Network
The power of a smart network lies in its ability to translate on-site activity into anonymised, actionable data. This is made possible by advanced analytics from smart cameras (MV) that use computer vision and machine learning for person counting, traffic flow analysis, and generating real-time heatmaps of your site’s floor plans.
This data allows you to see which areas are frequented most often, providing valuable insight into customer behaviour. The dashboard can combine heatmap analytics with other insights, such as dwell-time, to show exactly what is keeping customers in your store.
The Wi-Fi connectivity measures more than the basics. The dashboard can display how long a device is connected, the length of the average visit, and how many people connect to the network. It also measures engagement statistics, such as loyalty:
How frequently devices connect
The busiest days of the week
The busiest hours of the day
The number of people who pass by the network but never connect
The websites and apps most visited by users are collected, and you can utilise those details to implement marketing initiatives. All this anonymised data can be exported and used for various purposes to benefit strategic business decisions.
The Technology Behind the Insights
To deliver these capabilities, Dynamo6 partners with market-leading hardware and cloud-based services from Cisco Meraki. The foundation of the Meraki platform is its cloud-managed network, which offers a centralized dashboard for managing your entire infrastructure—from wireless access points and switches to security appliances—from anywhere in the world, dramatically reducing complexity.
Crucially, the platform also delivers enhanced security. It allows for network segmentation, which securely separates enterprise, guest, and IoT networks. This is vital for protecting both sensitive customer and store data from potential threats.
The benefit of a cloud-managed dashboard means it can be securely accessed by authorised staff whenever and wherever they require it, a feature that has only become more relevant with the rise of remote and flexible working.
Use Analytics for Strategic Decisions
The data gathered from a smart network directly informs better business strategy and boosts operational efficiency. Heat mapping and traffic flow data can guide essential decisions about product placement, staffing levels during peak hours, and even inventory management.
This data also unlocks powerful personalised marketing. By using integrated Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in access points, you can deliver targeted offers directly to customer mobile devices based on their real-time location in the store. This allows you to create highly relevant, proximity-based campaigns that drive sales.
This extends beyond analytics into a fully connected ecosystem, where the network can manage everything from smart cameras and access points to environmental sensors for lighting and HVAC, contributing to a better overall experience for both customers and employees.
Getting Started: Building Your Smart Network
After establishing your requirements, our expert engineers will recommend the best combination of services for your business. We will deploy the Cisco Meraki hardware and set up the cloud-managed network and analytics for you.
Beyond the initial setup, our Managed Services team acts as your dedicated partner, providing proactive monitoring and strategic guidance to ensure your network delivers continuous value. We take ownership of your network's health, handling the monitoring, management, and optimisation so you can focus on your business while we maximise the performance and security of your technology investment.