In a world in which nearly everyone is walking around with miniature computers in their pockets, which among other functions gives constant access to increasingly precise location. As a result, businesses from nearly all sectors have become more location focused and are relying more heavily on this location data to grow revenue and open up new and improved services for their locations. Even beyond that type of location data tied to a user’s location in that given moment, more companies are utilizing location intelligence and even more could benefit from these workflows with the right expertise.
This is the topic of a recent webinar presented by Precisely that was hosted on Geo Week News. The webinar, entitled Location Intelligence Has Changed – Are You Keeping Up?, delved into why this space around location intelligence has grown so much in recent years, why that growth figures to continue, and some examples of how different industries are utilizing Precisely’s MapInfo Pro. Below is a quick recap of pieces of the presentation, given by Product Marketing Manager Ruslan Sultanov, and you can click the button for free access to the webinar recording along with presentation slides.
In the roughly 40-minute presentation, Sultanov covers a lot of ground, including some points in which he gets into the weeds about specific use cases with live demonstrations, but the start is an important outline of where we are today with location intelligence and why it’s crucial that businesses do everything they can to derive value from this data. That includes the who – meaning things like demographics of a customer base, competitors in an area, and potential new customers an area could open up – the where – such as local flood zones, the location of cell towers, etc. – and the why – delving into customer behavior in certain areas, walkability of certain neighborhoods, and risks for specific zones.
Above all else, it made sense to start with what exactly location intelligence even means. On this point, Sultanov said, “Location intelligence, in a nutshell, is simply an organization’s capability to make sense of spatial relationships between people, assets, and the environment to derive trends and insights that will inform their decision making.”
He also talked about why we are in a place in which location intelligence is such a key factor for so many businesses across different industries, and it largely comes down to simple technological improvement. That ties back to what was mentioned at the top of this page, with location data about individual users being so readily available, as well as software (like Precisely’s MapInfo Pro) that can more easily derive key insights from non-technical users. Even now, while the use of location intelligence and spatial data is increasing, it’s still not ubiquitous, Sultanov noted.
“At times, when so much investment is at stake, it is unimaginable that some businesses still refer to countless business intelligence dashboards, or Excel spreadsheets, to derive this level of information. But this is changing rapidly.”
After talking about some of the broader trends around the growth of location intelligence and its use across industry, Sultanov dives into some specific use cases in three different areas, all including live demonstrations via screen-sharing. Using MapInfo Pro, he showcased how real customers can use location intelligence for ad-hoc mapping, location reports, and location data management and analytics.
It’s certainly worth checking out the full recording of this to see the full demonstrations and how these workflows can work in action, but as a quick recap Sultanov talked about different industries in retail – specifically a coffee shop in San Francisco – and insurance, specifically in Florida. In the demonstration, he showed how even non-technical users can utilize this data to derive key insights with multiple layers of data within one interface to do things like determine the best place for a new shop location. He also showcased report tabs that insurance providers could utilize to get more detailed information about risks and other concerns associated with different areas.
Overall, it’s clear from this presentation that Sultanov believes location intelligence will be at the center of a large chunk of business moving forward, and that companies need to start acting on that now.
“Location intelligence is probably the most cost-effective tool you can imagine. You can employ location intelligence before a lot of other things you need to consider in your organization.”
For your free recording of the presentation, as well as access to the slide deck, fill out the form at the link below.
