A Lexington-based tech company is working to transform your mobile phone into a personal digital concierge for local dining, entertainment and retail shopping experiences.
Omveria uses Apple’s iBeacon technology to identify shops and restaurants in the nearby vicinity and gives users quick and simple access to those businesses, by way of their own mobile applications.
Chief executive officer Joe Montgomery founded Omveria two years ago along with fellow Lexington native Rick Baker, Omveria’s chief technology offi cer, and founding partners Buddy Bryant and Ralph McBarron. The company’s aim, in part, is to help small businesses gain a meaningful foothold in the rapidly expanding and often overwhelming mobile app landscape.
“Our business is built to provide app solutions to literally millions of businesses,” Montgomery said. “[Small businesses] are just in there trying to survive. ... For a lot of them, for a very modest price, we can help them have the kind of presence they need to have.”
As consumers grow increasingly dependent on mobile devices for everything from ordering takeout to depositing checks, businesses can’t afford to sit on the sidelines of mobile app technology, Montgomery said. But jumping into today’s saturated market with any kind of meaningful presence can be difficult for small businesses.
“It used to be that if you wanted to know what was going on in a business, you had to go find out,” Montgomery said. “Because of these mobile devices we carry around in our pockets, businesses now have to follow the customers.”
While mobile devices have advanced quickly, they are still somewhat limited in terms of memory. That means that even for the companies that do it right, most mobile app icons don’t stay active on their customers’ small screens for long.
“The reality is you can only get 40 to 50 apps on a mobile phone,” Montgomery said.
That’s where Omveria comes in. By using the company’s cloud-based dashboard, consumers can access the mobile app of any business in their immediate vicinity without having to download it to their own device. So users get the company’s information delivered to them, precisely when and where they are in a position in the physical world to use it.
“We came to the realization that, with these location technologies and cloud technologies, why should you need to search for some [business] when the phone already knows it’s here?” Montgomery said. “That’s what really got us started on the whole automatic launching sequence of being able to pull up a relevant app based on where your phone is at.”
The iBeacon technology on which the Omveria app is built uses small beacon boxes to calculate a mobile device’s location on a micro-local scale and enable mobile apps to respond accordingly. Previously, the iBeacons have been manufactured to communicate only a mobile phone’s distance from the beacon source, based on the strength of the signal, and multiple reliable beacons have been required to pinpoint a phone’s exact position. But Omveria has taken the technology a step further, by adding a new protocol that enables it to communicate not only distance, but also direction, Montgomery said.
With Omveria’s new protocol, called Moonbeamz, businesses with a centrally located beacon at their locations can now distinguish between a customer entering the front door 30 feet away on the left, for instance, and one who is just returning from the restroom at the same distance on the right, Montgomery said.
“It’s a very important improvement that only our company has at this point,” Montgomery said. “We can target messages by direction, location and time.”
Omveria’s headquarters is located in downtown Lexington’s Triangle Center, but the Moonbeamz technology was developed in conjunction with the company’s subsidiary in Edinburgh, Scotland.
So far, the Omveria app is only available for Lexington, but the company plans to expand the concept. Omveria’s plan is to anchor its position in each market by partnering with entities that have high visibility in those communities. In the case of Lexington, that entity is Rupp Arena.
“Rupp will be the first implementation of [Moonbeamz] anywhere in the world,” Montgomery said.
And Omveria’s platform is built to share more than corporate promotional information. The platform also has folded in social networking capabilities, Montgomery said, so users will be able to post videos and feedback to share their experiences in a local market, for instance, and they will gain loyalty points by frequenting shops or viewing and sharing business campaigns.
“We encourage consumers to tell us what they love about Lexington,” Montgomery said. “It will become their way to find out what’s going on in the market.”
The Omveria app is currently approved and available for download on iPhone and Android devices. The platform has been undergoing its beta testing phase and has already signed on more than 2,000 users, Montgomery said. Omveria’s goal is to prove the concept’s viability in the Lexington market this year, and he expects to be scouting new markets for expansion by first quarter of next year.
“With our technology, and with the way that we have solved some real barriers to entry for businesses, we hope that we become a tool for consumers to be able to access millions of businesses at their fingertips,” Montgomery said.
The key, Montgomery said, is to keep the focus on the individual customer, and to give them the control to use the technology as it suits them.
“You have to make it useful to the user,” Montgomery said. “Our entire design philosophy is based on that premise. ... As one of our employees said, if you put yourself where the user sits, you’re always going to make the right decision.”