NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc. today announced the launch of NEC ALP, a business intelligence analytics platform for retailers that delivers real-time content and data measurement. The NEC Analytics Learning Platform (ALP) combines advanced video analytics with NEC’s digital signage expertise to make retailers smarter through big data, content matching and delivering relevant content. NEC ALP was unveiled at the 25th annual NEC Display New York Partner Showcase, held this week.

“With NEC ALP, we’re giving retailers the ability to provide customers with a personalized experience through real-time, relevant content triggered by demographic data such as age and location,” said Richard Ventura, vice president of strategy, NEC Display Solutions of America. “This also provides retailers with valuable insights on the impact their content has, creating more opportunities for consumer engagement, which is invaluable to growing their business. With NEC ALP, we’re helping retailers deliver the right message at the right time to the right audience.”

NEC Display developed a new back-end architecture for the NEC ALP business intelligence platform that uses both edge and cloud computing to deliver real-time insights. Using facial detection, non-identifying demographic data such as age and gender are fed into a locally-based computing appliance, which then triggers the appropriate content to be shown. Data is then delivered into the cloud where big data analytics will provide retailers with insights such as impact on sales from content, demographics and audience traffic, overall engagement with customers and which content triggered the most positive customer experiences.

“NEC ALP is not a facial detection or even a digital signage solution,” Ventura said.”It is a fully-featured business intelligence platform that is all about enhancing the customer experience by driving engagement. It’s less about hardware and more about the data analytic capability the technology enables.”

The platform’s data analytics capability gives retailers the power to deliver the right message or content to the audience because it answers the questions of who the customer is and which piece of content was most successful in creating a meaningful engagement. Using this data, NEC ALP is able to draw a direct correlation between when content was played, the number of impressions and what the conversion rates are to actual sales.

“One of the biggest challenges retailers face is changing customer behavior to spend more time in stores,” Ventura said. “NEC ALP answers this challenge by providing the ability to make positive impressions and engagements with customers.”

The NEC ALP system consists of hardware, software, cloud services, managed services and big data analytics. Locally in-store, the platform consists of an edge computing appliance, cameras and sensors. The system is designed with full API integration into key digital signage content management systems (CMS), allowing it to deliver and trigger content onto different media player platforms. The triggered content is then displayed on NEC Display large- or small-format displays.

As a complete platform, NEC ALP includes everything from consulting, software, hardware, cloud computing, customized software development, physical installation, software and hardware integration, integration into key content management platforms and content creation capabilities. The platform also includes on-site, 24/7 service and maintenance, with hardware, software and managed services support.

“With NEC ALP, we’re helping change the narrative of what defines digital signage in retail,” Ventura said. “Instead of being limited to traditional architecture such as a media player with apps, NEC ALP includes data analytics with CMS integration to enhance customer engagement.”

NEC ALP integrates several partners’ solutions directly, including the BrightSign platform, NAVORI and StratosMedia content management systems (CMS), and Microsoft Azure and Intel for infrastructure. In addition, the platform uses NEC EVATM for video analytics and Data Call Technologies for weather and location-based content aggregation.

NEC ALP is available beginning in January 2019. Find out more about NEC ALP here.