It's a company known as the Experience Engine, but it's already poised to join the growing ranks of companies offering a particular function as a service, rather than as an extension of operations taking place on a company's grounds. TE2, the Experience Engine, is not only to make that experience-as-a-service (XaaS) more available to potential users, but it's also raised a pretty fair piece of cash in the furthering of said goal: $3.5 million in its initial funding round.
The company hasn't been around long—it was only founded in January 2013—but already it's causing something of a stir and plenty of early interest in its operations and products. Considering what the TE2 platform is set to actually do for businesses, it's not surprising there's plenty of interest involved in the operation. The TE2 platform is set to provide marketers with what's called a “real-time conduit” designed to help firms become better engaged with customers at physical store locations, and in turn, not only make the shopping experience more convenient for customers overall, but also make said customers more engaged in the experience and drive monetization efforts along with it. This not only boosts revenue, but also improves customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, meaning that customers are more likely to come back in the future.
The company has been developing its product ever since its start a bit over a year ago, and will begin deploying its solution line soon, with reports projecting the first breeds will go out in “early 2014,” which is rapidly running out before it turns into “mid-2014.”
So how does the TE2 solution work? It creates what's described as a Live Branded Map, a patent-pending tool that provides customers with more information about what the brand can offer and how those offerings relate to the customer, a development that allows the customer to get more deeply acquainted with the brand in question and just what it can offer. The system can learn user preferences and offer up specific deals and offers according to that experience, and can offer said pieces through a variety of platforms, thus ensuring the best possible reach for the user base. TE2 can even offer up a kind of sandbox demonstration system, allowing users to build a Live Branded Map to show just how it might work for those users. The company already has a variety of industries in mind for its XaaS offering, including hospitality businesses, retail operations and even theme parks, meaning that there should be plenty of takers in this field.
One thing is quite clear, however: when it comes to business these days, just about anything a business can do to offer more value to the consumer is going to be something worth at the very least looking into. The consumer is stretched thin, with prices on staple goods like food and energy increasing and wages staying comparatively static in the face of this. When heating costs are on a steady climb, there's a lot less room to buy a new book, toy, or similar less-than-essential thing, and retailers—which so often sell those less-than-essential things—have to find better sources of value to effectively compete. While the Live Branded Map may not be that solution for every business, it might well be at least for some, and in turn, that could be the start of something very exciting: a bit of recovery in the retail sector. Only time will tell, however, just how well the idea works.