Global Geospatial Industry Outlook
2. Location and Business Intelligence Market 2.1 Overview Location Intelligence solutions are one of the relatively new components of the geospatial industry. It is a means of combining location data with business data/processes in order to draw meaningful insights, discover relationships between various factors and identify trends. It has a wide range of applications ranging from rendering basic features such as map-based visualization to enabling complex analytics for scenario analysis. Location Analytics solutions and platforms are also being used to create services based on real-time movement of objects (people, vehicles, packages, etc.) For Location Intelligence, a user needs to either capture/curate location data related to its operations, or procure it from a third-party. In general, most businesses, institutes and government bodies routinely collect vast amounts of data on their assets, operations, transactions, human resources, customers, citizens, etc. While the level of details at which these data points are collected may vary for each one of them, usually, there is always some location component which can be utilized for generating business intelligence. Figure 2.1 – Location Compenents within Business Data Business Data Assets Database
Address of offices, outlets, machines, warehouses, etc.
O&M Schedule
Location of the equipment scheduled for repair and maintenance
HR Database
Inventory Database
Address of employees, travel requirements
Itemized data on availability of specific items tagged to outlets, warehouses, etc.
SCM Database
Address of transport assets, vehicles and points of source and delivery
CRM Database
Demographic data of consumers including Zip code/city/state etc.
Location Contents
For example, an organization that runs logistics operations would usually maintain information on the location of its warehouses, location of vehicles, routes, etc. Similarly, another organization that runs a chain of restaurants, maintains a database on outlets, warehouses, delivery channels and other related attributes. Most of these datasets normally contain a location aspect within them. According to a 2018 report on the ‘State of Location’ by Carto, nearly 94% of all organizations collect and/or store location data in some form.
2.2 Industry Value Chain and Landscape The value chain of Location Intelligence begins with creating software or platforms, geocoding engines with analytics features, added with map rendering capabilities and simulation algorithms. This is followed by capturing map and location data, which includes getting the map data (base maps, satellite imageries, map layers, etc.) and geographic coordinates of objects and Points-of-Interest (PoI). These are integrated with business data and processes to create user and industry specific solutions.
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