Indoor maps play a huge role in the creation of intelligent spaces.

They are the starting

point for any project that requires location awareness. However, implementing and
maintaining an indoor mapping program on a large scale can be a daunting prospect
for any organization.

Let’s consider some of the challenges you may face when embarking on your own
indoor mapping journey:
● You need to digitize thousands of venues at scale in a short time.
● You need beautifully designed and interactive digital maps.
● Your maps must be up to date to best serve visitors and employees.

To meet all these challenges head-on, you will need an interactive, accurate, and
scalable indoor mapping platform to digitize indoor spaces such as large hospitals and
healthcare centers, corporate campuses, retail spaces, and airports.

In this guide, we will reveal why indoor maps matter for IoT and smart buildings and how
indoor maps are used in complex indoor environments. You will also learn what the top
criteria for successful indoor mapping are and how to get started with your digital
mapping journey.
Table of contents

● What is indoor mapping?

● Why do indoor maps matter for IoT and smart buildings?

● What are the criteria for successful indoor mapping?

● How do I get started with indoor mapping?

● Why choose Pointr Maps?

What is indoor mapping?
Indoor mapping is the process of converting floor plans into digital,
interactive representations of indoor spaces. In addition to serving as
a wayfinding platform, indoor maps can enable users to visualize
spatial data, creating real-time ‘indoor location intelligence’.

Users now have the ability to see locations, points of interest (PoIs), people, and assets
on an interactive digital map, enabling location-based services such as indoor
positioning, indoor navigation, asset tracking, geofencing, and spatial analytics. These, in
succession, enable different use cases that accelerate the transformation of any location
into a smart building capable of exploiting IoT.

With Pointr Maps, you can easily create detailed maps of

your indoor spaces and let visitors see where they are
right in your app.
Why does indoor mapping matter?

Indoor maps are particularly useful for large buildings such as corporate campuses,
airports, shopping malls, stadiums, hospital complexes, and universities. Here are some
of the key benefits of indoor maps:

5 benefits of indoor maps for smart workplaces

1. Help employees and visitors find their way to their desk or meeting room - a
feature that is particularly useful for hybrid workplaces that rely on hotdesking.
With digital maps connected to the IoT, employees can book their meeting rooms
or workstations easily via their mobile devices. Employees know in real-time
whether a room is already booked.

2. Give operations teams insight into which areas are over- and under-utilized.
Building managers can visualize how visitors interact with a venue in real-time:
track which meeting rooms are being used the most, view heatmaps, occupancy
counts and analyze journeys. This powerful data helps maximize space efficiency
and reduce redundant office space..

3. Empower facilities management teams to control HVAC systems and lighting

with digital maps combined with IoT sensors. This minimizes energy and
electricity usage when spaces are empty.

4. Facility management teams can track the efficiency of cleaning journeys

around a building to optimize amplitude. Maps can also indicate the location of
emergency exits, CPR kits, first-aid equipment, defibrillators, and fire extinguishers
to ensure they could be found quicker in an emergency.

5. With geofencing, the system can send alerts to building occupants depending
on their current or past location, for instance to show the best way for each
individual to reach a safe indoor or outdoor area.

“For great workplace experiences, you need to build trust

with users and have real-time maps that are relevant to
them. With Pointr, digitizing maps and keeping them
up-to-date is super smooth.” - Brennan McReynolds, Global
Digital Lead, CBRE Host
How can retailers benefit from indoor mapping?
With the advent of COVID-19 has come the realization that not only do shoppers need to
find products faster than before, but grocery pickers are working twice as hard to fill
many more orders than previously. By directing customers and employees to the right
products, retailers can boost sales and fulfill orders more efficiently.

If a retailer wants to boost sales, directing customers to what they are looking for is a
very good start. Indoor mapping systems can do more than help a shopper find a
toothbrush or a cocktail dress from their favorite designer. It can also be used to route
people around a store to avoid bottlenecks and queues. With geofencing and
location-based notifications, retailers can flag up offers on the way, as well as suggest a
diversion to complementary purchase.

IoT systems in stores can also warn a member of staff that items are getting low or have
run out, and guide them to the right position. With smart employee routing, retailers can
also save 7 minutes per order fulfillment journey (source: Honeywell). That’s millions of
dollars saved each week for large retailers.
 Customer Story

How Pointr created

a Mobile Store Guide for Harrods

Harrods is one of Europe's most iconic and prestigious department stores with a long
tradition of excellence since 1849. With 100,000 visitors navigating its million square feet
of shopping area every day, it is one of the busiest tourist attractions in London.

Harrods and Pointr started their collaboration in 2014 to improve the digital customer
experience at the department store. Harrods asked Pointr to provide mapping and
navigation to help customers navigate the store and find their favorite departments and
brands. It was critical for Pointr to ensure that the in-store navigation experience worked
to very high standards.

Harrods offers thousands of products that change daily and regularly refurbishes the
store. Paths, maps, and points of interest change all the time. How do you keep the maps
and wayfinding up-to-date?

Pointr worked closely with Harrods to deliver beautifully designed digital maps in line
with the Harrods brand and excellent customer experience for wayfinding & search.
Pointr created a custom feature for Harrods that provides automatic updates to the
product catalog, pulling changes directly from Harrods’ database. This feature can pull
changes from data in most formats. Pointr has equipped Harrods with automatic
mapping updates. Thanks to Pointr’s dynamic CMS, Harrods is able to make changes to
the maps & wayfinding in a few clicks.
How can hospitals benefit from indoor mapping?

In hospitals, 40% of visitors and patients depend on staff for wayfinding assistance -
sometimes even employees themselves get lost. With a mobile app with interactive
digital maps at hand, they can turn their journey from stressful to anxiety-free.

Indoor maps can also enable real-time location monitoring of hospital equipment. In
large hospitals, nurses spend on average 1 hour per shift on locating equipment. With
digital maps, they can view the real-time location of an asset and get notified if an asset
leaves a specific zone.

How can indoor mapping help with transport?

Ever got back from a business trip and wondered where you parked? Ever tried to find
your Uber as you arrived at a large airport? Ever wondered which is the quickest route to
check-in, security, and your gate?

Indoor mapping takes care of that. It can be integrated with the transport hub’s systems
to know which bus, plane, or train you are catching and direct you accordingly. It enables
airlines to improve revenue and operations via location-based notifications, using
geofencing. Travellers can get notified on special deals available nearby, or re-routed if
the gate their plane is leaving from changes..
What are the criteria for successful
indoor mapping?
Indoor mapping is a hard nut to crack! It is a lot more challenging than outdoor
mapping. You need to provide an interactive and intuitive user experience, even across
multiple floors. Every time you’re changing the venue's layout, it changes the map - you
should ensure your floor plans are always kept up to date.

When looking for an indoor mapping partner, you'll want to know if they can map all
your buildings easily, how long it will take, and what the cost will be - both to produce the
maps initially, and then to keep them updated. You can review existing maps from
existing customers to check whether they are user friendly, interactive, and updated.

It can be challenging to find your way through multiple mapping providers. We’ve got
you covered - here’s our guide on the 12 criteria for successful indoor maps.

The 12 criteria for successful indoor maps

1. Your maps should be easy to use and accurate

Indoor maps need to offer ease of use and for that, they need to be accurate, detailed
and intuitive so that people can find out where they are and how to navigate the space.
Crucially, they need to know they are on the right path when they pass identifiable
mid-way points. Maps also need to be comprehensive, which means mapping an entire
area, even the parts that are not used as frequently as others.
 The story of a potted plant!
Pointr’s mapping platform is fast and scalable, but it’s also designed to be smart and
deliver maps with an unmatched level of accuracy, simplicity, and clarity. It doesn’t
introduce unnecessary and irrelevant details into the mapping process, making for a
better experience for end-users.

One example of this relates to a competing product that, while attempting to digitize a
map, went to the extreme of representing a pot plant, even going to the extent of
drawing in individual leaves!

Such detail is irrelevant to smart digital mapping and serves no useful function. Our
machine learning algorithms are clever enough to understand this and ignore this kind
of trivia, resulting in a cleaner, more functional experience for our users.

2. Your maps should be interactive

Unlike a static map, which is an image with no interactive elements, an interactive,

dynamic map should allow for user interaction. Users should be able to use intuitive
search so that they can get directions to points of interest.

3. Georeferencing is a must-have

Your map needs to be placed precisely on a world map where it belongs. You need to
know where your building sits in relation to the outdoor world to enable accurate
outdoor-indoor navigation. To do this correctly, your indoor and outdoor coordinates
must be precise.

4. Easy to integrate with outdoor maps

The journey doesn’t start in your buildings - for many visitors it starts at home. Your
indoor map needs to be easy to integrate to outdoor maps such as Google Maps or
Apple Maps. When arriving in the parking lot, you should direct users to the closest
available spot that allows them to access the building through the best entrance.

5. Support multiple user types

Who are the target users for your indoor maps? Is it customers, employees, or
administrators? Or all of the above? Your mapping platform should allow you to
customize routes depending on your user needs (such as step-free access for indoor
wayfinding, admin role for maintenance via the app). A person visiting a hospital, for
example, will not be as interested in maintenance points of interest as a member of staff.

You shouldn’t need to have a different map for each user profile using the same space -
instead, you should have customized visualizations of your space based on a user’s
profile with a single map.

6. Easy to update

Indoor maps need to know when something in a facility changed. This is especially
important for hospitals and retailers which need to regularly update layouts. To keep
maps updated, building managers need an efficient content management system that
empowers them to make changes at the touch of a button.

7. Built to scale

Believe it or not, mapping is still a manual process today. Many large retailers, hospitals,
and workplaces have to hire cartographers to manually convert floor plans into a digital
format, a process that requires frequent maintenance and updates across venues. This is
a major challenge, especially for large retailers such as Walmart with thousands of
stores and Fortune 500 companies with dozens of corporate campuses. It’s a challenge
that Pointr set out to solve with MapScaleTM, the first and only digital mapping platform
that can digitize hundreds of buildings automatically.

8. Customizable

Your map should reflect your organization’s branding. For instance, an airport will likely
want to allow its restaurants, duty-free shops, and airline check-in desks to adapt their
representation on a map to use their own branding and logo.

9. Future-proof

Buildings change and technology evolves. One of the most crucial aspects of your
indoor mapping technology is to ensure that it is future-proof so it can accommodate
alterations to building usage and can work on a new platform or end-user device as
needs change.

10.Support third-party integration

The true power of indoor maps is revealed when they are seamlessly integrated with
third-party software, such as IoT platforms, patient appointments, and room booking
systems. Interoperability is not a ‘nice to have’. Your system should support easy
integration with third-party solutions. Ensure your indoor maps have robust SDKs
(Software Development Kits) and APIs.

11. Multi-platform

Indoor mapping systems need to offer full operability access to the web, iOS, and
Android to ensure users can get directions from kiosks or mobile devices.
How to get started with indoor maps?
Here’s an overview of the indoor mapping process to help you get started.

Step 1: Source your floor plans

To create an accurate indoor map, you need to have access to your floor plans.
Do you have an up-to-date file of your venue? They are generally in one of these
formats: DWG, SVG, JPG, GeoJSON, PNG, PDF. These floor plans will be the
foundation for your digital maps.

Step 2: Customize your map by adding points of interests

and geofences

Your indoor mapping solution should allow you to add and edit points of interest
(POIs). PoIs can be any access points (such as entrances, stairs, travelators) or
amenities (such as meeting rooms, desks, restaurants, ATMs, toilets, first-aid kits).

You should be able to customize PoIs and to add actions (“Book this desk now”).
Additionally, you should add the option to create virtual zones on the map - also
called ‘geofences’.

With geofencing, you will be able to trigger actions when a user enters or exits a
specific zone in your building. For example, when a cleaning cart exits a zone
(such as the bathroom), it can automatically mark it as done in the software and
even trigger a push notification to the building manager when several zones
have been completed.

Step 3: Map integration with mobile apps or web

Once your map has been produced, it then needs to be integrated with various
platforms such as mobile apps via SDKs and APIs. SDKs are a set of tools,
libraries, relevant documentation, code samples, processes, and guides that allow
developers to create software applications on a specific platform.

Step 4: Update your map

Once your map has been created, using a Content Management System (CMS)
enables you to create, view, manage, and edit all your maps in real time. This
allows you to easily manage your venue data across a global portfolio of
buildings.

Step 5: Enjoy beautifully designed digital maps - and export

data in one click

Once your maps are available on mobile or desktop, you can also export your
maps and the data with one click. Pointr allows users to export maps in PNG, SVG,
CSV format easily.

In the next section, we showcase how you can create beautifully designed,
interactive, and user-friendly digital maps with Pointr.
Why choose Pointr Maps?
Pointr Maps is an interactive, multi-platform indoor mapping solution that has
revolutionized mapping indoor spaces in such areas as workplaces, retail, and hospitals.
Here’s why you should select Pointr as your mapping platform:

We have built the first and only mapping

platform available at scale
Believe it or not, mapping is still a manual process today. You need to manually create a
map of each venue using existing floor plans and add a layer of points of interest. Many
large companies hire mapping companies to manually convert floor plans into a digital
format, a process that requires frequent maintenance and updates across venues.

This is especially challenging for large retailers such as Walmart, and hospitals or
Fortune 500 companies with dozens of corporate campuses and millions of square feet
to map.

At Pointr, we took a different approach. Our core offering is accurate, real-time indoor
positioning technology. When we started working with the largest US department store
chain, we realized their indoor maps were not accurate. So we decided to solve this
problem and we started offering maps.

When we entered the space, we asked ourselves: how can we automate the whole
mapping process? How can we automatically update and manage all the maps?

Our customer’s main challenge was to get indoor maps of their thousands of stores very
quickly and to offer a smooth shopper experience in their app so that customers could
find products easily.

We solved this by integrating our mapping engine with their CAD Store system. As soon
as their CAD files are updated, our engine processes the change. Every week the
retailer’s app refreshes with no human intervention - it only takes a couple of seconds
per floor. Previously, the customer was updating the map of each store manually, one by
one, a process which meant that store maps were often months out of date before they
were reviewed.

If there’s a small manual change, it will automatically push the change live. If it’s a more
important change, you can ensure that the system requests approval first. If points of
interest don’t exist in the CAD, our engine supports a spreadsheet upload or an API to
make sure it automatically feeds data into the map. We can also easily push our data to
Apple Maps (imdf) and Google Maps.

As a result, the largest US department store chain digitized 3,000 retail stores with
MapScale™:

● Scalable maps - With Pointr's MapScale™ mapping automation engine, all maps
are updated within seconds every week
● Product location - Department and product location are searchable within the
mobile app
● Indoor location - Precise and real-time indoor positioning to spur contextual
notifications and streamline click-and-collect services
● Indoor wayfinding - Shoppers can drop a pin on the in-store map to locate their
desired department and brands

How Pointr has solved digital maps

Map Production Map Data Enrichment Map Rendering

Pointr MapScale™ Pointr Cloud Content Interactive Digital Maps
● Produce hundreds Management
of digitized venues Mobile and web map
instantly Enrich maps with more widgets with 2D/3D views,
● Intelligently extract points of interest, external intuitive search, wayfinding,
map data such as identifiers, and virtual and geofencing
room names, desks, zones notifications
and amenities using
AI
Discover the most scalable mapping platform -
MapScaleTM
Say goodbye to manual mapping that takes months (if not years). MapScale™ is the first
and only digital mapping platform that allows you to automatically sync all your floor
plans instantly and convert them into beautifully designed and interactive digital maps.

From floor plan to beautiful digital map with MapScaleTM

MapScale™ is the one and only choice for organizations that need to digitize multiple
venues quickly and at scale.

● Convert 1000s of floor plans into digital maps (web + mobile) in seconds
● Auto sync updates
● Supports product search, turn-by-turn routing, and blue-dot
● Already live in 1,000+ retail venues in the US
● Enterprise-friendly, customizable
● First and unique automated indoor mapping solution in the market
● 100,000x faster map production and map updates (offices will change often)
● 90%+ accuracy (gets better with each floor plan)

Powered by our patented machine learning algorithm, MapScale™ can automatically

“recognize” certain objects such as room boundaries, desks, and key building structural
items like doors and staircases, making sure maps remain up-to-date at all times.
Updates are applied in seconds and with zero manual work.

The speed at which digitized maps are updated once the system is trained is hugely
significant. For a mapping project that takes 2 years, MapScale™ gets it done in days!
MapScale™ automatically detects when changes are made and processes thousands of
map updates across multi-platforms in 10-15 minutes, allowing your maps to stay
relevant at all times, hassle-free.

Auto-accuracy logically checks for significant changes made to digital maps. Changes
are pushed across all platforms through the Pointr SDK.

If changes are significant, MapScale™ automatically notifies the mapping team for a
manual check of the accuracy of the floorplans. This improves operational efficiency for
the mapping team, saving them time and costs.

Users can rely on automatic, dynamic updates but also have the flexibility to make
manual changes such as adding, moving, and deleting objects and geofences in one
dashboard.

Automatic update with Map Scale

Pointr Maps are available for Mobile Apps or
Kiosks

Pointr Maps are easily integrated into mobile apps (iOS & Android), kiosks, and websites,
allowing navigation hand-offs between platforms and ensuring that your maps are
always up-to-date and accessible to your visitors and employees at all times.

Cross-platform integration is a breeze. Our SDK supports multiple platforms including

iOS, Android, web, and kiosk. Maps are easily integrated with different mapping
platforms, such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Microsoft Azure Maps.

Pointr Maps are interactive and user-friendly

Pointr MapScale™ produces accurate maps at scale quickly, but that is not the only
reason our mapping technology is used in thousands of venues in the U.S. and globally.
Our maps also support dynamic pathfinding with smart re-routing and in-app search,
allowing the visitors to find their destinations easily.

Pointr Maps are integration friendly

Software agnostic and integration friendly, Pointr Maps seamlessly integrate with 3rd
party software and mapping platforms.

We provide the best indoor - outdoor wayfinding

experience
Our mapping platform digitizes buildings and venues with smooth indoor and outdoor
transitions in 2D or 3D, delivering a frictionless navigation experience to your visitors.

We cross-reference multiple base map platforms to ensure our digitized maps are the
most accurate and truly comply with the actual geo-coordinates on Earth. We ensure
our blue dot sits accurately in our digital maps and thus enables a precise
indoor-outdoor wayfinding experience for our users.
With Pointr, you don’t just get maps you get:
● Indoor positioning technology with 1-3 meters (3-9 feet) accuracy
● The most efficient digital wayfinding technology in the world - available in 2D or
in Augmented Reality navigation!
● High-accuracy location data for powerful location analytics

We are already live in 2,000 venues and 130 million square feet globally. If you’re ready
to join our existing customers in experiencing revolution indoor mapping and navigation,
contact us to be a part of this amazing journey!

Pointr has achieved what no-one else could: a

lightning-fast, scalable platform for digital mapping.
Request a live demo of our maps
and see for yourself

Great maps and high-performing location services can drastically improve

the way your users interact with the building.

If you’d like to get a clearer picture of what your building maps should look
like to be successful, you can request a live demo of our technology today.

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