6 Use Cases of Geospatial Analytics That Change Your View of the World
Imagine that you’re sitting through a report and you get presented with data that looks like this:
| City | Monthly Sales | Latitude | Longitude |
|---|
If you just look at the first two columns of the table, you would only be able to say that the monthly sales for the two cities are the same. Presenting your sales and customer data using tables and charts is perfectly fine in most cases. But when you have latitude and longitude values, what you need is a map.
By incorporating the location, we’re able to see that the largest sales are actually concentrated in a specific area. This is an insight that you can only figure out by using geospatial analytics. Geospatial analytics is becoming increasingly relevant for businesses because of three main reasons.
- There's a lot of data being collected from mobile devices, social media, and satellites. All of these have a location component and it can help you better understand more about your challenges and opportunities.
- Cloud computing resources have helped big and small businesses to improve their analytics and data strategy at a much lower cost.
- Open-source culture has made it easier for people from all around the world to use different datasets and cutting-edge methodologies to gain a competitive advantage in business.
Because of all of these developments, geospatial analytics is now more valuable and more accessible than ever before. Here are 6 use cases of how companies are using it to improve different parts of their business.
Use Case #1: Economic Development Monitoring
Stay ahead of the curve by using satellite images to monitor man-made and natural environments. Managing assets just got easier since you can combine satellite images with geotagged data to get up-to-date information and verification on where everything is located. Shown here is a satellite image of Ho Chi Minh in 2012 and 2019.
Complex issues are best solved by making data-driven decisions and using satellite imagery allows us to understand, plan, and respond to changes in a timely manner. Our team has collaborated with humanitarian organizations and academics from around the world in order to map poverty in the Philippines by using nighttime light intensity and transfer learning.Use Case #2: Geospatial Segmentation
Create geospatial consumer segments based on nearby landmarks or points of interest (POI). The types of places in an area can tell you a lot about the people who stay there. For example, an area that has a lot of 5 star hotels means wealthy hotel guests and residents who can afford to live in a rich neighborhood. On the other hand, an area with a lot of bars means young professionals who are out at night. If you know where a specific demographic is, you can directly cater to them.
We’ve been working with a telco company to get the socioeconomic classification (SEC) of households in urban areas using nearby POIs. To do this type of analysis at scale, we created an open-source tool called Geomancer so that we can handle all possible combinations of households and POIs.Use Case #3: Geographic Marketing
Plan your marketing activities and product mix based on geographic data. Companies have a limited marketing budget and they need to spend it efficiently to not only keep current customers but also reach new customers.
We’re offering a granular wealth profile dataset that can predict how wealthy a 16 square kilometer area is. Create microsegments by combining your demographic variables with the wealth profile in an area so that you can perform highly targeted campaigns for a specific group in a specific area.
Use Case #4: Sales Territory Management
Market demand is dictated by how many people there are in an area. Even if you increase your supply in an area, it doesn’t always mean that you’ll be able to sell more.
Visualize population data on a map to find areas with good sales opportunities with a single glance. By itself, population data can already be used to figure out which areas are underserved. Combine population data with your sales data and other datasets — such as distribution channels — to identify gaps and solutions for your sales performance.
Use Case #5: Logistics Optimization
Speed is the name of the game when it comes to deliveries and it’s the best way to retain and attract a strong customer base. With the rise of e-commerce in Southeast Asia and the increasing popularity of food aggregators, retailers and restaurants have to stay competitive by jumpstarting or improving their in-house delivery service. Companies make use of geospatial analytics in order to efficiently dispatch their fleet as well as accurately track movement so that customers get their orders on time, each and every time.
We’ve worked with a restaurant chain and we helped them plan out the delivery range and delivery time of their stores. We used isochrones — which are connecting lines drawn on a map based on similar travel times — to find areas which aren’t covered by their current stores. By combining their sales data with isochrones, we discovered which areas have high demand and we were able to recommend where future stores should be.
Use Case #6: Site Planning
There are only three things that matter in real estate: location, location, location. The most desirable homes are in prime locations. A business wants to operate in a profitable location. The price of land is influenced by its location. Before you even consider buying the land, you need to have an idea of the location that the building will be in because once you build it, you can't move it anymore.
Geospatial analytics helps you plan out a possible site for your business by giving you a literal bird’s eye view of the lay of the land. OSM buildings are widely available for major cities worldwide. The urban density (or lack thereof) can be combined with other business metrics to determine the viability of setting up shop in a certain area. Whether you’re going to open a condominium, a distribution center, or a branch store, it’s worth it to make sure that you’re getting your money’s worth.
Geospatial analytics is becoming increasingly important for all industries. It can help you rethink your business in terms of location such as where specific customers are or where your operations are. This information can help you make better business decisions like where to build new infrastructure, where to target your future marketing efforts, and where to focus your limited resources to maximize profits and minimize costs.
Interested? Learn more about geospatial analytics and how you and your business can start using it by reaching out to us for a consultation or a demo!
