Considerations for Deploying Location Intelligence: Whitepaper
Click to download the "How To Implement Location Analytics" Whitepaper!
Each day more and more organizations are deploying location intelligence. Nowadays new and innovative ways to look at large data sets using location as a driver in business process analysis are needed. Transforming vast collections of information into insightful trends and patterns helps enterprises answer important questions such as the “Who”, “What”, “When”, “How”, and “Where” of their data. Analyzing data according to these questions can provide essential information on answering the ultimate business question – “Why”. Traditional business intelligence falls short of answering the “Where” factor of data if that data is not plotted on a map and analyzed visually.
In order to enhance a company’s existing array of data into valuable decision-making information, location intelligence is a must. The following whitepaper yields an important perspective on how deploying location intelligence can provide a deeper level of analysis for a given organization.
Have a comment on what you liked about the whitepaper included in this post? Please leave us a comment below – we’d love to hear from you!
read moreWhy Location Intelligence For Retail Works
Screenshot of Atrya's location intelligence dashboard
The Atrya Group, a company primarily responsible for providing home solutions, has used location intelligence software to help bolster retail sales of windows, doors, verandas, shutters, garage doors, inside and outside building joineries, and renewable energies. The company is a testament to the idea that utilizing the proper technology at the right time can be exceptionally rewarding.
In order to help improve their sales force, the Atrya Group utilized Galigeo’s location intelligence software to sift through data on a map. By visualizing complex sets of BI data, they were able to quickly identify and analyze the penetration of their current market activities – benchmarking actions such as their direct sales, reselling efforts, and successful / unsuccessful negotiations.
Understanding the geographical context and location-based relationships that lie within their data has allowed the Atrya Group to better understand essential performance metrics involving sales, distribution channels, and customer-based data. From a retailer perspective, it was especially important for them to understand their audience. Being able to identify areas with high potential of buyers has helped contribute to their success. These areas were usually characterized by having a higher population density, higher rate of homeowners, and higher average household incomes.
The geomarketing analysis performed on a routine basis has allowed and will continue to allow the Atrya group to improve the efficiency of its sales force. From targeting potential customers to identifying untapped market segments, location intelligence software has positioned the Atrya Group to truly dominate in its retailing efforts.
Have you had similar success using location intelligence software to boost sales? Please leave us a comment below – we’d love to hear from you!
read moreSimplifying complex data through geo-visualization
The traditional process-model of visualizing your organization’s operations on a map require an extraction, transformation, storage, and interactive procedure of internal data sources to the GIS mapping system. A GIS-tool has been used since 1969 for most organizations being public or private, since 75-80% of all businesses has a location component in their activities. This is a well-functioning tool for identifying, managing and decision-making of what is happening, what is causing these happenings, and what will happen…
The question today, is how to optimize time and work for these business activities? Can we create, visualize and manage geo-reports with just one-click? Yes! By merging the BI to the GIS systems of an organization, the latest changes of all business units’ operations can automatically be transferred to the GIS-mapping system and update the mapping-reports. With one click the manager can both visualize the daily organizational performances and manage the business units by automatically allowing the diffusion of daily reports with a map attached to each respective business units. E.g. for logistics activities of organizations, this tool enables each business unit to have an itinerary-planning schedule with a map for optimizing the efficiency of today’s delivery in a geographical area.
Many other business units have gained time and work effort from automatically receiving the daily mapping-reports, enabling the respective business operators to visualize today’s operations and tomorrow’s expectations.
Have you or your organization experienced putting too much effort into creating these form of reports for a large number of business units? Used too much time on coordinating the operations while ensuring not to overlap the work of others? A need to improve the coverage of sales areas and distribution? Other related issues?
read moreTop 3 Characteristics of a BI Map Viewer
A business intelligence (BI) map viewer is an add-on to your BI system that is responsible for mapping datasets and applying spatial processing to BI data. By plotting BI data on a map, a map viewer adds mapping and analysis capabilities to an existing BI tool and enhances data visualization.
Image of a BI map viewer being used to study toxic releases of gas across the United States
There are many different flavors of BI map viewers to choose from; some are laden with simple geographic overlays, while others still employ more advanced GIS systems that function as extremely accurate trend spotting devices. When selecting your BI map viewer, please keep in mind these traits:
1.) DIRECTLY INTEGRATES WITH YOUR BI SYSTEM. With all of excellent location intelligence tools available, there’s no reason you should be “loading” your data into maps from business intelligence (BI) software. Choose a solution that can update your maps as soon as your data is altered in your BI. By choosing a map viewer that can integrate directly with your current BI system and work directly through the Business Intelligence web interface (such as SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, WebFOCUS) you are really enhancing your BI system. An integrative map viewer also allows you to leverage your existing data repositories so there is no need for duplication of data. Data should never have to be duplicated when it comes to map viewers. If it can’t properly sync up with the business intelligence software tool that is being employed or is unable to access it via the web, it’s probably worth looking elsewhere.
2.) INTERACTIVE AND INTUITIVE TO USE: By integrating spatial dimension to data analysis, data can be more quickly queried, analyzed, and displayed through a map allowing enterprises to exploit the data proactively through dynamically populated, interactive dashboards and detailed reports. An interactive map viewer should allow you the ability to interrogate your BI data directly from the map with multiple widgets. You should have the option to from multiple angles. Most interactive map viewers come with a wide variety of functionally that is easy for a non GIS expert to use. However, a true map viewer for BI should give you the full interactive control of the map and the option to create geo-reports that can easily be shared within your organization.
3.) ABLE TO ADRESS THE BIG DATA. A strong BI map viewer also needs to map large scale data sets and make sense out of big data. The value of a map viewer is to guide businesses and interpret chaotic data. Business intelligence users generally have such large data volumes that analysis and decision support often require data size to be reduced or otherwise manipulated in order to increase the performance of queries and visualization. With location analytics this is not true. Location analytics can actually extract greater value from an increasing volume of context-sensitive data that is collected. Furthermore, well designed location analytics solutions more quickly and easily transform that data into visual information that provides actionable insights.
As you set out searching for a new way to spice up your BI toolset, keep these three considerations in mind. Choosing the right location analytics tool is a tough decision, but one that will certainly determine the effectiveness of your organization to identify promising trends and in turn boost sales.
For more information on how to implement a solid, BI integrative interactive map viewer, please contact us through this contact form or leave us a comment below.
read morePredicting and Positioning with Location Analytics
If you’ve followed the news recently you’ve likely seen the latest bit on how Target used predictive analytics to identify teen pregnancies and thus were able to market baby products to a particular customer segment before any babies were even born. All things considered, that’s pretty amazing. You might also recall that certain EMS providers are beginning to use predictive analytics tools to prevent medical emergencies before they happen. These are two prime examples of how crafty individuals are using data at hand in a creative fashion. One must consider that if you want to follow suite, you’ll need two things: a repository of data and a method for uncovering patterns hidden within that data.
A fairly common example of where data is aggregated nowadays is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. CRMs are used to track customer data and opportunities across an organization and come in many shapes and sizes. If you work for a large enterprise, you’re most likely familiar with them. Smaller organizations, on the other hand, are just beginning to see CRMs integrated into their businesses. Thanks to vendors such as Salesforce and Sugar CRM, prices of small scale CRMs have dropped considerably. Thus, if a CRM hasn’t been implemented into your business yet, chances are that it will be soon.
The second half of the predictive analysis equation is to have a means for analyzing aggregated data. Having a location analytics tool is most definitely a step in the right direction for companies that can afford it. Keep in mind, however, that the more data and relationships that need to be analyzed, the more complex and expensive a solution will be. Imagine how many Target customers there are around the nation and how many EMS organizations (public and private) there are. That means one must secure a reliable method for overlaying data on a map that is stored in a CRM for quick, visual interpretation. As an aside, many CRMs come equipped to store geographic information (such as a customer’s home address, a storefront location, or a truck delivery route), but lack the capacity to interpret the data in a visual, map-based manner.
We live in an exciting time as data is at our fingertips everywhere we go. We have places to store it and new ways to look at it. Analyzing the geographic aspects within that data has such a positive upside for business that each day we’re finding new and better ways to make decisions. From the public health sector (predicting diseases) to the economic sector (uncovering new sales territories), predictive analysis by way of location analytics is paving the way for smart, evidence based decisions.
Leave us a comment below and let us know how you plan to use location analytics to your advantage!
read moreWhy CRM needs GeoMarketing
In the last 10 years, internet has been seen as the most promising channel for getting access to the customers. However, with the emergence of location-based services, proximity is regaining the advantage. This is especially true for B2B, and even more for industries with complex products or offerings like high-tech, pharmaceuticals, engineering, finance and insurance. In this context, efficiency of sales forces requires to optimize the time sales representatives spend on the field.
Let’s take an example. A beverage company wants to optimize its sales force efficiency and increase its sales. They are targeting 1 million of potential customers (restaurants and bars) within the US territory and their sales force consists of 500 sales reps. Given these numbers, that’s mean each sales rep has to visit 2000 customers, i.e. 8-10 visits every working day. Almost impossible, No! The solution resides in the optimization of geomarketing efforts.
One of the most efficient ways of doing that is to implement a location analytics solution to increase the number of meetings in the same area, to identify sales area coverage deficiencies, to decrease the costs of transportation, to concentrate sales teams on the most promising areas and to make the balance between online and physical visits.
Because Location Analytics gives the possibility to understand the geographical context and the location-based relationships that lie within CRM data, more and more businesses turn to Location Analytics to enhance trade area analysis, predictive analytics and data visualization & reporting.
GeoMarketing, mapping, sales territory management and spatial analytics are the new frontier of CRM!
Have some examples where location analytics software has been used to geospatially plot your CRM data? We’d love to hear from you – please comment below!
read moreTelecom Toolset Must-Have: Location Analytics
As we are steadily learning, the application of location analytics tools is not industry specific. This blog has thus far revealed insight as to how businesses in the retail and healthcare markets have used location analytics to their advantage. In this particular blog post we will briefly discuss how telecom providers might use geo-marketing tactics to grow revenue, improve their customer satisfaction, quality of service, and expand into untapped territories.
The majority of telecom providers are already using business intelligence applications to store loads of customer data. This includes everything from customer demographics to historical sales data. Unfortunately and all too frequently, the extra step of connecting these data sets with powerful GIS tools (such as ArcGIS by Esri) is overlooked. This may be attributed to many things, amongst them a lack of insight as to what benefit location analytics tools might actually present to a telecom provider. Nonetheless, the result is usually an incomplete data analysis strategy coupled with little to no foresight into existing data patterns. This is to be expected with an approach that does not include location analytics tools.
Location analytics tools such as Webigeo can connect ArcGIS Servers to business intelligence platforms
Anyone who knows anything about the telecom industry would agree that ensuring quality of service for customers is a must for retaining customers. For existing subscribers this means keeping them happy and satisfied. Using location analytics tools to track service calls or areas with frequent support requests helps identify areas where either network infrastructure is faulty or where customer service representatives need dispatched. Being able to visually identify locations such as this, physical regions on a map that need attention, and draw relationships to better provide proactive customer service is a truly powerful asset. Proactive customer service means happy customers. Happy customers mean more business.
Click this image for a demonstration of a geodashboard.
Revenue and profitability can also be tracked in real-time with a geodashboard. A geodashboard, or the oftentimes web-enabled location analytics tool, is extremely useful for identifying underperforming sales regions. These again may be attributed to failures in operating or technical networks, or may simply reflect a lack of resources. The important thing to remember is that these can be quickly identified with a location analytics solution. This is very useful if you’re a member of top-level management that wants a quick answer without having to put forth a tedious amount of work to churn answers out of bland data.
Utilizing timely information to help justify rational decisions is only logical. Assigning the appropriate resources to where they are needed before further losses are incurred is something that everyone might seek to do but can only achieve if they have the right tools at their disposal. Location analytics for use in the telecom industry is something that we feel can help do exactly these things.
For further information on location analytics tools applications in the telecom industry please join Galigeo at Esri Telecom Seminar on March 5 and 6 in Charleston, South Carolina. More information can be found by leaving us a comment below or contacting us via our website!
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