Bluetooth Technology Provides
a Unique Solution for Helping
Businesses Reopen During COVID-19

A global innovator of indoor location services, Kontakt.io leverages Bluetooth^® beacon technology to help better connect people, locations, and things to increase customer satisfaction, save costs, and improve productivity and safety. Serving more than 2,000 customers across diverse sizes and industries, Kontakt.io is now working on solutions that will support the safe reopening of businesses around the world.

Rom Eizenberg, CRO at Kontakt.io, highlights the benefit Bluetooth Location Services solutions, such contact tracing, will be able to provide business as reopening initiatives continue throughout the pandemic.

Q&A with Rom Eizenberg

What challenges must large venues, such as offices, conference centers, and retail stores, face and address in order to safely reopen in a post-COVID-19 world?

I think we’re looking at three key challenges here. First, of course, is ensuring workplace safety to the greatest extent possible. Without giving everyone the confidence that everything possible is being done, it will be very difficult to really start making progress towards safe reopening. Next is the challenge of addressing business continuity and delivering a degree of flexibility that will allow businesses to continue to operate safely under changing circumstances. Last is the frustrating lack of testing kits. Without sufficient supplies in the places where they are needed, it’s difficult to get the best data possible on the extent of the problem while making it possible for those not infected by COVID-19 to feel safe in knowing those around them, especially in professional environments, have also been cleared.

For things like larger venues, there is technology that can help, but it’s important to first understand how its deployment combats the spread of COVID-19. Generally speaking, we can divide the technologies into two categories: those that help in maintaining social distancing and those that focus on contact tracing.

With social distancing, it’s obviously about helping to maintain a safe distance between people to reduce the risk of viral transmission. The common rule of thumb is six feet or two meters apart, a distance that can be monitored by location technology. Contact tracing, on the other hand, is used to identify those who have been in close contact with an infected individual and use that information to possibly quarantine them or monitor their condition. This can be fairly labor intensive, generally requiring trained personnel who can get lists of identified persons, contact those people, and work with them to establish how significant the exposure risk was.

We’re seeing that a lot of businesses are reacting to the crisis by quickly installing these technologies to help them reopen or stay open. Often, they’re combining social distancing, contact-tracing strategies, and room-occupancy monitoring for the best possible coverage. 

What role will technology play in reopening large public venues and buildings? 

We see that IoT and location services are no longer nice-to-haves but a necessity. In many cases, corporate offices, hospitals, schools, factories, etc. already have a Wi-Fi infrastructure installed; these new ones, very often, already have Bluetooth^® access built-in, which allows for quick Bluetooth solution implementation. So, we know that the technology is already there and that many businesses are already ready to introduce location services, but they are not aware of the fact that every day they are generating valuable data they don’t have access to. To help businesses reopen, what they are missing is Bluetooth technology to help them make sense and meaning out of the environment.

We know that implementing location services is crucial when it comes to creating a better experience and a safer and more efficient environment in your venue. We need to understand that location services are not a cure for COVID-19, but they strongly support the reopening phases by monitoring interactions, sanitization, and giving employees and visitors confidence to stay within a venue whether it’s a museum, school, or office space.