Open innovation is on everyone’s lips, but are companies actually embracing it in practice? Discover how Fincons Group and Nextome make Open Innovation reality
Open innovation fuels partnerships
Open innovation should be the norm in every sector, as it allows a free flow of ideas, speeds up time to market, reduces costs and allows companies to combine forces and areas of expertise to make ambitious projects come to life in record times.
An open innovation mindset is especially important in tech, as changes in this sector happen at an extremely fast pace, and what’s innovative today can be considered normal-if not even outdated- in a few months.
This approach is exactly what prompted Fincons Group to partner with Nextome, an Italian company that provides advanced RTLS and indoor positioning solutions.
Nextome – a simple solution to a familiar problem
Who hasn’t spent hours trying to find a specific shop-or the bathroom- when visiting a department store?
This is the premise on which Nextome was founded, in 2014, by four computer science PhDs.
After creating the first prototype, in less than a year and filing the patent, it was all downhill for Nextome, that boasts important clients in several sectors, from healthcare to museums to high-end fashion brands.
Their simple but effective solution enables reliable end-to-end tracking by combining Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE), Near Field Communication (NFC) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies.
Nextome for the manufacturing sector: so much more than tracking
Nextome’s patent solution was born for indoor tracking, but has since evolved to cover end-to-end tracking, from production to supply chain, right to the final customer. The combination of RFID, BLE, NFC and GPS technologies allows companies to closely monitor not only the production process, but also transportation, even in case of products destined to foreign markets, no matter how far their final destinations.
Another important application of Nextome’s solution is occupational safety. From enforcing the mandatory use of personal protective equipment to limiting access to specific areas and monitoring people and machines in dangerous areas, this solution’s main application is definitely accident prevention, but it can also help to reconstruct events in case of mishaps or malfunctions.
In addition, Nextome has been focused on GDPR compliance right from the start, and all data collected and managed in the tracking process is completely anonymized, to guarantee privacy and regulatory compliance.
Benefits of an open innovation partnership
The partnership between Fincons Group and Nextome was based on open innovation, and as such, it helped significantly reduce time to market and received a warm welcome from Fincons’ clients.
For Fincons, this partnership meant broadening their service offering to include Nextome’s ready-to-market solution, while Nextome widened their client platform while benefitting of Fincons’ experience and expertise in the manufacturing sector.
Fincons Group’s clients can also profit from this partnership, that gives them access to an additional tool, compatible with most solutions already in place, and managed by their trusted system integrator that is already familiar with their needs and preferences.