Australian property investment firm ISPT has signed a one-year contract with data analytics and marketing services provider Skyfii to provide it with its IO Insight, a data analytics solution that will run across 32 retail and commercial towers in Australia.

ISPT, an investor and developer, was looking for a means to measure the performance of its portfolio of shopping centres and commercial office towers. It holds a total of $17.1 billion worth of property assets dispersed across capital cities and regional markets, including such trophy buildings as 161 Castlereagh Street in Sydney, 1 William Street in Brisbane and 500 Bourke Street in Melbourne.

It has generated high returns for investors, which are some of Australia’s largest industry superannuation funds, and it claims that more than half of Australian workers have their retirement savings invested through them. In the 2017 financial year, it posted a 13.57 per cent total return, outperforming its benchmarks.

With the Skyfii deal, ISPT will have access to critical venue-management information, including volume of customers, dwell time and frequency of customer visits, which will allow it to improve operational efficiency and the overall customer experience. The ASX-listed Skyfii says the partnership with ISPT further cements its position as the leading provider of analytics and marketing services to the property sector in Australia and New Zealand.

The deal follows similar arrangements with Scentre Group, the GPT Group, Mirvac, Aventus, Lewis Land Group and IPOH. Skyfii says it uses data from “chatterbox” smartphones of anonymous centre visitors to analyse their shopping behaviour; those smartphone users who log into a centre’s free wi-fi can provide considerably more data for analysis.