6 Key Benefits of Integrating Geospatial Data in Your Business Strategy

Geospatial analytics adds timing and location to the traditional data types you already use in your business strategy. The fields of science, government administration, retail, investment, and insurance can all benefit greatly from integrating geospatial data.

Geospatial data analysis involves tracking spatial and geographical traits, maintaining historical records, and sustaining an accurate inventory of consumers, buildings, vehicles, resources, and competitors. And the benefits are substantial.

Let’s discuss 6 key benefits of integrating geospatial data into your business strategy.

Enhanced Decision-Making

Geospatial data provides detailed location-based insights. This data is essential for making intelligent and informed business decisions. 

Raw geospatial data of a specific location studied over time can help business owners understand why, when, and where events occur. Improved and more accurate decision-making helps achieve goals, generate revenue, prevent legal risks, and improve external awareness of threats and competitors.

For example, accuracy, detail, and reliability are crucial in urban planning and logistics businesses. Geospatial data gathering can require 3D modeling and annotation, satellite imagery analysis and annotation, and the integration of AI and machine learning. A business owner in the fields of urban planning and logistics can predict urban growth and optimize transportation routes highly accurately and at a never-before-seen speed. 

Improved Customer Targeting and Marketing

Integrate geospatial data into your business strategy to gain more granular consumer and customer insights. 

Which regions have the highest concentration of potential customers? What are the other stores that your business’ patrons visit? What brands do these stores stock? Where do your consumers go before or after visiting your business? All of these questions are involved in client lifecycle management and can be answered with the use of geospatial analysis of consumer behavior and preferences.

Align your outreach efforts, tailor your marketing campaigns, optimize your store layout, and offer personalized promotions based on the answers to these questions. Almanac by Olvin is a great example of a predictive intelligence company that uses geospatial data to predict consumer behavior for retailers.

Optimized Resource Allocation

Geospatial data helps in identifying resource needs and optimizing distribution. For example, emergency response teams can use geospatial analytics to track incidents, predict the spread of incidents, and, in turn, allocate all necessary resources effectively. Real-time geospatial data in the form of GPS tracking for delivery vehicles and equipment helps managers monitor their usage and location. 

Better allocation of resources saves costs, increases efficiency, minimizes waste, and ultimately opens up a path to sustainable business growth. Organizations can become more efficient with finite resources by aiming them in the right direction. 

If you’re in the fields of agriculture, healthcare, telecommunications, banking, infrastructure, forestry, or navigation, geospatial data will do wonders for your resource management.

Enhanced Supply Chain Management

Businesses optimize their supply chain visibility and efficiency with geospatial data in various ways, such as tracking shipments and managing inventory.

This analyzed location data allows companies to identify optimal locations for their factories, warehouses, and other facilities. Conclusions and decisions are based on factors such as proximity to suppliers, customers, and transportation infrastructure. 

From there, companies can identify the most efficient transportation routes and delivery schedules, which leads to immense cost savings, reduced delivery delays, decreased negative environmental impact, and improved overall business logistics.

Risk Management and Mitigation

Anyone in the insurance industry needs to understand the geospatial data of businesses to do their jobs accurately, which includes identifying and mitigating risks. These could include natural disasters, market risks, etc.

Insurers use geospatial data to understand the geospatial traits of buildings and to develop liability frameworks for them. The geospatial traits would include precisely where the building is located, the space it takes up, and its proximity to surrounding buildings. Thus, they can determine how vulnerable a building is to destructive weather and indirect damage (spreading fire, vehicle accidents, collapses, floods, crime, etc.).

Other geospatial traits that are important for insurers to know to give a proactive risk assessment are how many businesses are within the building, what they do or sell, occupancy, and how many people visit daily.

Competitive Advantage

Give your business a competitive edge by integrating geospatial data into your business strategy. Geospatial analytics helps to build data visualizations, which can take the form of maps, graphs, statistics, and cartograms. A business strategy that contains in-depth analytics into historical changes and current shifts in any market is well on its way to success. 

Some ways to stay ahead of competitors are to:

• Make accurate and rapid decisions.
• Enhance accessibility to your good or service. 
• Improve supply chain management.
• Allocate resources effectively.
• Reducing risks.
• Identify cost-saving areas.
• Decrease energy usage.
• Direct staff patterns more effectively.
• Monitor customer behavior.

Most of which we have mentioned, and all of which can be improved by the use of geospatial data integration.

Conclusion

The integration of location- and time-based data insights into your current business strategy can notably result in some game-changing benefits.

Improve your marketing, mitigate risks, optimize resource allocation, and skyrocket the quality of your business decisions. 

James Ewen

James is the head of marketing at Tamoco