Mapsted’s location-based analytics combines geographic data from assets with data on an organization’s operations and customers to discover powerful answers to any business challenge and share those insights with the rest of the organization. 

Moreover, location-based analytics enables businesses to build complete information and analyses for reaching new customers, markets, and labels of success. How? By bringing the power of Mapsted’s hardware-free technology to traditional business analytics systems, like business intelligence (BI), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and enterprise asset management (EAM), as well as productivity tools like Microsoft Office and collaboration tools like Google Sheets. 

Companies create, manage, and analyze large quantities of data in the business systems they use every day. Information about the location is pervasive in this data. Customers and visitors have a location. Assets, whether fixed or mobile, broadcast locations, as do staff members and suppliers. Above all, with the ever-present use of mobile devices and social media, location data is becoming even more pervasive. 

By choosing to ignore the location data in your business systems, your company misses the opportunity to make the most informed decisions and create the best business outcomes. Typically, business analysts, marketing directors, operations managers, and other decision-makers lack easy access to spatial tools that visualize and analyze data in a geographic context. Mapsted’s hardware-free location-based analytics provides a transparent connection between the analytics that is required for a successful business and the business systems already being used every day. 

Why is Mapping More Than Connecting Dots?

Many businesses are completely unaware of the value that location analytics can add even if they do use some form of mapping in these business systems. Additionally, the common misconception is that mapping is just adding data as “ dots on a map”. 

While putting data on a map will help uncover patterns that graphs and charts won’t show, the true value of location analytics can be much greater. The three imperatives of location analytics outlined throughout the rest of this article will help those unfamiliar with Mapsted’s location-based analytics. For those who may be familiar with location analytics technology, but not necessarily Mapsted’s, these imperatives can be used as a yardstick to measure the activities of your business in terms of its level of sophistication and maturity in the use of location analytics. 

Imperative 1 – Expand your overview 

When you’re in the market to buy a house, you don’t make your decision based entirely on the information the real estate agent gives you. Your decision is based on more than just the number of bedrooms or the price. Typically, you do some additional research. What is the neighborhood like? What shops are in the area? How far am I away from my office? All this information helps you make a more informed decision. 

Similarly, when making a business decision, you wouldn’t be solely gazing at your own data. You need to enrich your view by learning more about the geographic areas in which your business operates.

Key Questions to be Asked

• What are the demographics and lifestyles of the people that live in each area?
• How are they expected to change?
• Where are competitive or complementary businesses?
• How long does the typical customer spend in a store?

The acquisition of information pertaining to these questions is called geo-enrichment. This information can add value to your data in ways: data enrichment and map enrichment. 

In other words, data enrichment means adding new columns of information to your own database records so you can slice, dice, and analyze that data in new ways.

Although your CRM data might reveal a lot about what products your customers buy and how often they buy them, it won’t tell you much (if anything) about the lifestyles or the life stages of those customers. Unless you have dimensions to your data to better determine the optimal products and services for your customers and how best to reach them.

Map enrichment means adding new layers of information to the maps you create. However, these map layers could represent demographics or the locations of certain types of businesses. Data such as these could include administrative boundaries acquired from a third party or real-time data like the path of a storm. Properly using these map layers with maps of your data can provide a more complete picture.

Imperative 2-  Go Beyond Basic Mapping

Putting your data on a map is simple and easy with many available mapping products. However, the business user dealing with a significant volume of data say – thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of customers, will need the right tools, which is never going to be easy. With that said, Mapsted Analytics is one such solution that creates value from location data because simply putting lots of data points on a map can quickly obscure it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to extract information about this data from the map. Not only does Mapsted Maps streamline the creation of custom maps, but also visualization of data with clustering, heat maps, color coding, and segmentation. By leveraging solutions such as the ones offered by Mapsted, you’ll find these strategies revealing more information from data, quickly surpassing the basic dots-on-a-map approach. 

Imperative 3- Perform Map-Driven Analysis

Mapping your data can uncover many patterns and insights that graphs, charts, and tables simply won’t reveal. However, it becomes a new analytical tool when you can interrogate it. Map-driven analysis can range from connecting maps to your data to more complex operations using spatial queries with geo enrichment.

Connect your maps to your data so as you drill into your charts and graphs, the map updates to reflect the changes in unison. Or, conversely, as you drill into your map, graphs, and charts update to reflect the current geographic area.

Naturally, using spatial queries with geo enrichment could help you understand the effects more fully. For example, It’s easier to estimate vulnerable populations or forecast losses by determining the path of an approaching hurricane. Specifically, in this case, the key is to identify the types of customers or facilities that may be affected.

Determining statistical anomalies in your data by using hot spot analysis can identify statistical outliers for validating data quality.

Using spatial modeling is ideal to predict performance for existing or new locations, especially if you’re trying to understand the effect on sales in existing stores by opening a new store in the same location.

Conclusion 

In order to maximize the value of your business data, what you need to know are three Mapsted location-based analytics imperatives: expand your overview, go beyond basic mapping, and perform map-driven analysis.

Backed by a support team available 24/7, Mapsted location-based analytics and the Mapsted Maps platform will help you and your business apply the three imperatives of location-based analytics.