Narian Technologies launches a full suite of NFC services for retailers

Narian Technologies launches a full suite of NFC services for retailers

Sometimes you just know something big has happened in NFC, and today is one of those days. No, we are not talking about the Google / Motorola news. That was yesterday, and whereas that is big for mobile and NFC down the road, it isn’t big for consumers and businesses right now. While everyone else is talking up their NFC mobile payments and associated services, which are yet to launch, and complaining about the lack of NFC phones in the market, a long term industry expert pulls the rug out from under them all. Today, that company is Narian Technologies and they have just pulled the holy grail of retail NFC service platforms out of their hat. How revolutionary Narian’s technology will be is for the market to decide, but from what we know already the company appears to have built a robust and fully comprehensive NFC system that can be put into any retailer’s store today, within an hour. Anyway, if you read NFC Rumors on a regular basis, you will know we don’t throw accolades around very easily, and have even been accused of being harsh. In our world, if an NFC product or service is good for the consumer, good for business and good for innovation on the whole, it is great. As a team, we are NFC enthusiasts / techy journalists and not fans of particular companies. As a site, NFC Rumors is more editorial than simply a reporter of news and we call it like we see it. When we go gaga over a new development or service, you can bet it has met our three step criteria as outlined above, and Narian Technologies NFC4All has so far.

Carol Grunberg, Google Commerce Executive said this about Narian Technologies CEO – “Highly influential expert in NFC and the Mobile Commerce space.”  Which is not surprising when you consider that Einar Rosenberg has been at the forefront of the industry, developing mobile and NFC technology for nearly ten years. “NFC can offer services not available with other technologies,” said Rosenberg.

Narian Technologies NFC4All NFC suite for retailers

To cut to the chase, Narian has developed a suite of services that retailers can offer to their customers to create loyalty and create convenience while allowing retailers to build their businesses and receive more profit. In essence, the system is run from apps on consumers’ NFC phones and utilizes NFC tags to create services in a plethora of different ways for retailers. Being able to think about experiences we have everyday and then being able to reformulate or change that experience for the better has always been the domain of the inventor.

Narian Technologies has taken this approach to retail services and has not only envisaged the pain points, but has created solutions using NFC. One great example of this comes in an NFC4all service called “line pager”, where if you are at the deli counter you can add yourself to the queue by simply tapping your phone against an NFC tag and then continue milling about until it is your turn to be served. This works on the exact same principle as booking a table at a restaurant and being handed an RFID buzzer with lights on it, but uses convergence to allow you to use your NFC phone to accomplish this time saving task. From a retailer’s perspective, this stops consumers from becoming impatient and leaving the store.

The retailer keeps a customer and is therefore more profitable and the consumer gets better service that is more convenient to them. Another application of Narian Technologies NFC4All service called “service pager” allows restaurant diners to tap their phone against an NFC tag to order more bread or water. Another service called “Maitre d” alerts customers when a table is ready without the need for the awkward disc shaped RFID unit or vibrating coasters that we have all become accustomed to. Using our phones as a converged way to interact with all retail situations is frictionless, saves time and lessens frustration while allowing businesses systematic services and management tools to push customer service to a new level, create loyalty and add to the bottom line. Everyone wins.

“NFC is not just for payments, and it certainly isn’t just for the Wal-Marts of the world. NFC allows consumers to interact directly with retailers, which opens up a world of possibilities – whether you shop at Target or the local Corner Store,” says Narian CEO, Einar Rosenberg.

The innovation doesn’t stop there though. Imagine, if you will, that your are in a large electronics store or home improvement store and cannot find an available employee. With yet another service Narian offers called “communicator” you can simply tap your phone against a NFC tag and speak with somebody at a different store or even a dedicated call center belonging to the same chain. Narian is giving out the specially designed NFC tags that connect to its system free to the first 1000 retailers who sign on to its service. Those stickers will direct consumers to download an app for their NFC phone to utilize Narian services within participating stores. To set up the system costs around $20 and a retailer can start offering value added services to customers who have NFC phones quickly and again can get setup in a frictionless manner. Starting to see a frictionless pattern with Narian? Merchants can fully launch customized services for as little as $0.05, without the need for expensive integration into their back-end.  Merchants only pay when consumers use the services.  From what we understand, that 5 cents is the cost each time a consumer uses an application or service in a participating retailer’s store.

NFC4All retailing segments for NFC services

Narian says its groundbreaking suite of applications addresses sixteen major retail market segments including restaurants, supermarkets, departments stores, hotels, stadiums and more. It is expected to transform the way consumers approach the retail experience. To date, Narian has over 300 defined NFC applications in 16 markets ranging from retail, access control, vending, medical, and others. First launching on Android NFC phones, Narian’s suite is already designed to work with other operating systems that are expected to support NFC in the future, including the BlackBerry OS from RIM, Apple’s iOS, Windows Phone from Microsoft, Web OS from Palm, and Symbian from Nokia. We are getting some hands-on time with the folks from Narian Technologies later this week. We will bring you more details as we learn them and from our understanding, we may have to spread all the abilities of Narian Technologies’ platform over a couple of posts, but look for them the back end of this week. Just out of interest, there are a few quotes from people in the NFC industry below:

“Narian is an innovator in NFC, one of the visionaries and early implementers in the space,” says Damien Balsan, Head of NFC Business Development at Nokia.

“Narian Technologies is unique in that it expands the possibilities of NFC, creating truly out-of-the-box ideas. In fact, they were the first company to show how ground-breaking NFC can be,” says Felix Marx, CEO of Isis partner, C-SAM.  “Narian has been at the forefront of NFC since day one.  We expect to see great things from them for months and years to come,” he added.

Most companies that are looking at NFC and the retail space have swallowed the NFC payments pill. Whereas that is a very important aspect of NFC, it is only a small part of the potential that smartphones, tags and near field communications has to offer.  From marketing to improving customers’ experiences, NFC has the ability to impact nearly every area of our lives. It has the ability to be a socially responsible, green and maybe the next great equalizer. It can help us manage our security, and related technologies will even help us manage our power usage within our homes in years to come. The internet brought us the technology of information, the smartphone brought us the technology of independence and mobility. We think of NFC and other contactless protocols as the technology of relevance for the want-it-now generation whose goals are convergence and frictionless experiences that are immersive and engaging.

Any technology has to be more than just hype, it has to have practical uses that can be profitable for business and easy to use for consumers with evident features and benefits that enrich peoples lives. Hype will always come hand in hand with an era of great innovation and our hopes for positive impacts for life’s little problems or more opportunities. However, NFC is not hype, it has practical applications which are becoming more evident everyday. When it comes to the argument that NFC is worthless because no consumers have NFC phones, which is not true, or that there are no NFC services, which is not true either, Narian even appears to make that issue null, void and frictionless by saying, “Merchants can realize these benefits with as few as 1% of consumers carrying NFC phones. There is no need for ubiquity of NFC for this offering to generate retail success.”

Writing for NFC Rumors, we are lucky enough to speak directly with or learn more about innovators like Margento, 3GTV, Proxama, C-Sam and now Narian Technologies to name but a few. Each have strong products predicated on innovative platforms and each have found a different way to use NFC. As we mentioned, we will bring you far more details on Narian Technologies NFC4all platform later this week with an in-depth review of strengths and weaknesses. For now, we wanted to let you know an impressive new NFC system with a low cost barrier for retailers and merchants has launched, and if you are intrigued, you should probably head over to Narian Technologies’ website and take a look or call them to learn more.