PAM Chief Technical Officer David Dixon shares his thoughts on agile precincts and connected experiences for high-frequency, complex venues.

Help, I’m lost…..

PAM helps large built environments like sporting & entertainment districts and resorts & casinos to implement environmental navigation solutions. We’re currently working on some of the largest and most complex sports & entertainment precincts in the world.

These kinds of navigation projects have traditionally been cobbled together using a variety of point solutions & services like digital signage, mobile apps, wayfinding designers, fabricators and web design companies. It’s notoriously fickle, with solutions often fragmenting the day they are implemented as the information they hold is not maintained and kept in alignment. The result is that digital directional signs no longer align with kiosk directional information, which doesn’t align with the mobile app, which doesn’t align with the website maps & destinations……

This issue is now being magnified as these built environments are evolving into “agile precincts”.

The evolution of Multi-purpose venues into agile precincts

An agile precinct is a term to describe a new type of multipurpose built environment where technology is used to transform the use of the site from one purpose to another quickly and efficiently but also holistically, including branding and customer touch points. A whole district can now be re-purposed within minutes, not days or months.

So what’s driving this demand?

There is unprecedented spend on the large precincts. For example, in North America, the individual spends for large sporting precincts like stadiums is growing at an increasing pace. A decade ago, the most expensive stadiums were the Yankees Stadium and AT&T Stadium. Both opened in 2009 for around US$1.4b each. A year later, the New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium opened for a total cost of $1.6b. In 2017, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened for US$1.7b and next year will see the new home of the Raiders open in Las Vegas Stadium for US$1.9b. This is dwarfed by the astronomical spend on the new home of the LA Rams (LA Stadium & Entertainment District) at a whopping US$4.25b, also due to open in 2020.

The greater spend on infrastructure is driving the need for a greater financial return to justify the investment.  The owners of these environments are developing new revenue opportunities from the site – more events. To deliver many more events and also ensure every event is high-quality, the precinct needs to be agile. For example, the Las Vegas Stadium, home to the Raiders from 2020, will host 46 major events in its first year. This includes concerts, MMA and monster truck shows. Of the 46 major events, the Raiders will only be several of these, at most. There will also be hundreds of other smaller functions and events to further utilise the infrastructure and drive other revenue streams. A traditional environment would struggle to change effectively at such a frequency.

There are very similar utilisation rates across these large investments. This is not just a phenomenon for sports stadiums. Convention centres, casinos, cruise ships, universities, resorts are all working to increase event frequency and with it, revenue. The result is this shift from multi-purpose environments to “agile precincts”. It’s a focus on  tailoring every single event for a specific audience, and being able to provide a level of engagement that makes for happy customers and higher revenues.

Navigation is a critical element in agile precinct. Visitors need to feel confident the trip to the stadium will be straightforward (frictionless). Once there, it’s essential that fans & visitors can navigate these highly dynamic environments effectively, to find products & services they desire.

PAM is on the cutting edge of a new generation of environmental navigation solutions that are streamlined and integrated into the owner’s operational ecosystem.

Developing customer-centric agile precincts navigation

To cater to the agile precinct, PAM provides a SaaS solution that aligns to a number key principles:

• Secure
• Integrate into the existing operational environment
• Operationally efficient
• High performing, scalable and highly resilient
• Cost effective and commercially justifiable
• Provide a great customer experience

PAM provides a SaaS solution that is used to maintain & administer navigational and promotional information from a single source system to multiple types of digital touchpoints; a single software platform that manages physical sign assets, digital directional signs, digital promotional signs, digital directories, kiosks, and mobile/web mapping solutions. As it’s all managed from a single platform, the information is kept in sync so all information is connected and consistent.

This results in a better experience for the visitor. Directional information is consistent across touchpoints and operational overheads are reduced as information needs only to be updated once to reflect across touchpoints. PAM also provides frictionless digital gateways between the kiosk and mobile device to enable customers to transfer the navigational experience to mobile to continue their journey.

For the agile precinct however, the solution needs to provide the ability to support a highly adaptive environment. PAM allows operators to pre-plan directional information. This capability allows for scenarios such as automatically changing directional signage and mobile app maps to direct traffic into a precinct before a major event and then change again, post event, to direct traffic to other amenities across the precinct.

PAM also allows for emergency scenario management, where directional information, for all digital touch points, can be updated simultaneously, relative to the event.

Finally, PAM provides the capability to provide connected experiences and other revenue generating capability, by connecting visitors with the services and amenities you wish to promote or optimise.

Our product roadmap is geared towards the rapidly evolving needs of agile precincts. We’re driving innovations in navigation and wayfinding by capitalising on the latest technologies. Our solutions are operationally efficient for the owner/operator and provide a brilliant customer experience. Finally, our solutions always provide a clear commercial benefit for our clients.

….now, where was I??

Read David’s LinkedIn article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigation-solutions-agile-precincts-david-dixon/