Most buyers don't struggle with the concept of counting people - they struggle with trusting the number. The question underneath almost every demo request is the same: can I make a staffing, leasing or space-planning decision on this data without getting burned? That's the lens we've used to answer the questions that actually come up.
For over 20 years, Cohera-Tech has installed and supported people counting systems for retailers, shopping centres, universities, and facilities across Australia and New Zealand. Behind our local support sits our partner Vemco Group, whose cloud-based reporting and analytics platform we run - technology proven across 2,000+ customers globally, processing more than 85 million counts a day. This FAQ draws on what that combination sees in the field, week to week, site to site.
Accuracy depends on physical conditions - lighting, entrance width, ceiling height, and how visitors actually move through a space. It's why Cohera-Tech works with you on-site to specify and calibrate the right sensor technology for your particular entrance or zone, rather than shipping a generic setup.
In practice, well-installed systems sit in the 98–99% range. The gap between a mediocre install and a great one is where accuracy is really won or lost. A 3D sensor mounted correctly over a clean, single-file doorway will sit at the top of that range. The same sensor over a wide sliding-door entrance with afternoon sun glaring through a glass façade won't - until the mounting and angle are corrected. The honest answer: accuracy is a range you engineer toward, not a fixed number you buy off a spec sheet.
This is the single most common reason a store manager stops trusting a dashboard. If your five-person team walks in and out forty times a shift, your conversion rate collapses and nobody believes the system again.
Staff-exclusion logic handles this by filtering employee movement - via a dedicated staff entrance, wearable tags, or behavioural patterns - so the traffic figure reflects customers, not colleagues. Confirm during setup that exclusion is switched on and tested. A system installed without it produces numbers that look plausible and are quietly wrong.
You shouldn't be. The analytics platform Cohera-Tech runs is hardware-agnostic, working across leading sensor suppliers including Xovis 3D AI, Milesight, Hikvision and AXIS. That matters for two reasons.
First, you can match sensor cost to the job - a small regional library doesn't need the same hardware as a multi-terminal airport or major shopping centre. Second, if you've already got counters installed across some sites, you're not forced to rip them out; we can often work with your existing hardware.
One practical note from the field: mixing sensor brands across a portfolio is fine, but keep the analytics layer unified. The moment you're juggling three different vendor dashboards, nobody compares sites properly and the whole exercise stalls.
Modern AI sensors go well past a raw headcount. They can estimate age and gender bands and - importantly for shopping centres, galleries and family attractions - separate children from adults. That distinction changes decisions: a centre reporting 10,000 "visitors" behaves very differently once it knows a third are children who aren't independent shoppers.
Universities and libraries use the same capability to understand who's using study spaces versus simply passing through. It's worth noting that all of this is aggregated, anonymous pattern data, not individual identification - a point worth raising early with your privacy officer or works council, and one Cohera-Tech is used to walking through with public-sector and education clients.
Raw foot traffic data offers limited value on its own. True insight emerges when foot traffic is analysed alongside sales figures, staffing hours, and spatial metrics. Through robust API integrations, the Vemco platform behind Cohera-Tech's reporting connects seamlessly with your existing POS, ERP, and BI systems.
The Vemco Group module set is built around specific jobs rather than one generic dashboard:
The same platform answers different questions depending on who's asking:
Hardware goes live in days; confidence takes a few weeks. You need a baseline period to see normal weekday and weekend rhythms before the numbers mean anything for decisions.
A habit worth adopting: cross-check the first week of counts against a manual tally at one busy hour and one quiet hour. If the system reads within its stated range against your manual count, the site is calibrated. If it doesn't, the fix is almost always physical - sensor angle, a reflective floor, or a door propped open by deliveries - not the software.
Often a single-site retailer gets a faster payback than a large chain, because one clear insight - say, that Saturday afternoon traffic peaks two hours before you'd scheduled extra staff - pays for the system quickly. The real question isn't scale, it's whether someone in the business will actually act on the reports. Data that nobody reviews returns nothing, regardless of how accurate it is.
Counting looks simple until you're troubleshooting a site with awkward geometry, or comparing thirty locations installed by different teams over the years. Cohera-Tech has been delivering people counting and analytics across Australia and New Zealand for over 20 years, backed by Vemco Group's R&D since 2005. That history matters less as a marketing line and more because the awkward cases have usually been seen before - so the answer to your specific problem probably already exists.
Navigating sensor options, accuracy requirements, or integration into your existing ERP and BI stack requires tailored guidance - not generic estimates. With over 20 years of experience, Cohera-Tech has specified and deployed custom people counting solutions across a diverse range of industries.
Reach out to our expert team to discuss your layout, define the insights you need, and discover how to consistently achieve 98–99% accuracy.