Sep 10, 2014

By Rumasa Noor

One-time UW-Whitewater student Joe Scanlin is now a successful entrepreneur who recently partnered up with the multinational corporation Microsoft.

Scanlin, the CEO and co-founder of Scanalytics, graduated from UW-Whitewater in 2012. He founded his company with his childhood friend Matt McCoy

Scanlin formed Scanalytics with the ambition to “redefine presence detection in the physical world.”

Scanlin said he started his company during his last year at UW-W.

The main product Scanalytics offers is called SoleSensor, a floor mat that digitally measures foot traffic in real-world.

“What we have developed is a sensor-based engagement analytics platform,” Scanlin said. “The censor is a memory switch that acts like a touch screen on the floor and then we tie that back to a software platform that allows users to gain analytics on movements and then use that information to create more dynamic space.”

Scanlin said he started the company with only two people; it has since grown and now has nearly 20 people in it.

Scanlin started a landscaping business when he was 16. McCoy said he acted as a right hand man of Scanlin, helping him with handling sales and project management. They ran that business until 2010.

Scanalytics serves multiple industries that require physical space such as retail, healthcare, commercial spaces and more.

“We are constantly coming up with new platforms and modules for our data manipulation and activation as we continue to advance both the hardware and software,” Mccoy said.

“We are releasing our SoleSensor 2.0 this fall which allows us to daisy chain 100 mats together (400 sq ft). With this new iteration we also gain more granular data points which makes us more accurate, and opens up our algorithms to be more predictive when matched with other macro environmental factors.”

McCoy said they are currently rolling out their Analysis Lab, a reporting platform that enables the easy integration of data with other external resources or spreadsheets.

SoleSensor is distinctive as there isn’t a product quite like this in the market. Scanlin said their competitors are companies that manufacture physical protection technologies such as cameras, beacons and so on.

“It [SoleSensor] gives them [users] a much more precise and regular understanding of physical movement without giving up representations,” Scanlin said. “A lot of interesting methods only gather about 5-10 percent of the activity, where we gather a 100 percent so it also gives them [users] a very easy and customizable platform to reach the goals that they have across different spaces or locations that they own.”

Scanlin was a part of the Launch Pad program at UW-W and was the winner of the Business Plan Competition (BPC) in 2012. He attributes part of his success to UW-Whitewater.

“I, at the very beginning, worked a lot with the professors in Whitewater,” Scanlin said.

“There also was a very accommodating space and resources and mentors that helped me at the beginning of the company.”

Scanlin said they want to expand their presence to multiple industries and aim to become experts at what they do.

“We are looking to grow and serve pretty much anyone that has physical space, and allow them to capitalize on that,” Scanlin said. “We obviously want to build our team and we want to be able to create jobs in Wisconsin and put Wisconsin on the map along with being able to serve multiple industries.”

McCoy said their mission statement is to be “the centerpiece for consumer traffic in the offline world.”

“Scanalytics will become an integral part of how physical spaces optimize their staff, sales and marketing efforts,” McCoy said. “Our platforms and data will act as the baseline for organic presence detection and will grow as a critical tool in the IoT [Internet of Things] ecosystem.”

Scanalytics is one of the 10 companies to be selected for the Microsoft Venture Accelerator program. It also is one of the 10 companies that recently received the Wisconsin Innovation Awards in August.

For more information on Scanalytics, visit www.scanalyticsinc.com.