Dayton, Ohio-based Woolpert has created GeoAwareness, described by the company as “a quick-start solution to improve online ordering and curbside pickup for multiple industries and their customers.” GeoAwareness pairs a customer’s real-time location to her order to provide an accurate time of arrival, enabling businesses to appropriately prioritize and prepare orders, while minimizing customer wait times.
This solution is designed to integrate into existing ordering systems and to be deployed within each customer’s Google Cloud Platform project, making it scalable, reliable and secure. Woolpert director of cloud sales Rick Bennett said the GeoAwareness solution was developed to make the online ordering and pickup process more efficient and convenient for businesses and their customers.
“Online ordering was huge and growing even before the pandemic, but now it is a way of life,” Bennett said. “This solution enables the location-based technology on a customer’s phone to communicate with the ordering system at their chosen store or restaurant to make that business relationship better, faster and easier for both parties.”
the GeoAwareness solution does not require an app. A customer places an order online and receives an estimated pickup time. When the customer leaves to pick up that order, he or she clicks “Leaving Now” on the mobile website where the order was placed. The customer is asked to share his or her location and has the option to request directions to that site. The location of the customer is then paired with his or her order on the store or restaurant’s real-time data dashboard, which is refreshed periodically to reflect and prioritize orders. As customers travel across geofencing borders, their orders are upgraded to the corresponding drive-time group. When the customer is within two minutes of the store, a visual cue alerts the staff so the order is ready and can be delivered curbside, upon arrival.
Bennett said GeoAwareness supports restaurants, retail stores, medical facilities, wholesale outlets and even service-based providers like utility companies.
“The GeoAwareness solution is scalable to the operations of even the largest retailers, and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides all the resources needed for high availability,” Bennett said. “It’s also not an off-the-shelf product—so it’s a build, not a buy—making its value that much higher. Woolpert sets up the infrastructure and teaches teams how to operate it. It also can be extended to include features like GCP analytics, machine learning and other applicable data, as desired by that business.”
