Release the Force of Geography for your business, Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India

Geography has forever been at the center of business choices. Organizations have been involved in the area or geographic data for quite a long time to break down, envision, and grasp business elements for additional educated choices. While ubiquitous, the area remains one of the most underutilized resources. It's undeniable that 80% of business information has an area or a spatial component related to it. With the blend of the right innovation and the spatial component currently present inside the business information, organizations can have an incredible asset to show up in better business choices and methodologies.

Geography has always been at the core of business decisions. Businesses have used location or geographic information for decades to analyze, visualize and understand business dynamics for more informed decisions. It is a known fact that 80 percent of business data has a location or a spatial element associated with it. With the combination of the right technology and the spatial element already present within the business data, businesses can have a powerful tool to arrive at better business decisions and strategies.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a technology for applying geography and helping businesses analyze, visualize and understand location intelligence to make more informed business decisions. This technology captures, manages, analyses, and displays all forms of geographically referenced information and allows the user to view, understand, question, interpret and visualize data in ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts.

In India, Government organizations that deal with national mapping, land management, urban and rural development, natural resources, etc., utilities, and telecommunications were early adopters of this technology. Now we see many organizations in Banking & Financial Services, Manufacturing, and Retail use GIS to extract more value from the data they already have in their business systems like BI, ERP, CRM, etc.

Location changes the way you look at the data Know your customers better They make business decisions based on customer preferences and competitive factors. GIS and location analytics allow organizations to visualize where their existing customers are, down to the neighborhood and household levels; analyze demographic, psychographic, purchasing, and spending characteristics for accurate customer segmentation.

Make better business decisions. With more accurate location and market planning insights at hand, the performance of a capital investment can be maximized. E.g., Walgreens uses GIS technology to track the incidences of flu to stock sufficient medicines for its cure; decide where to open new stores, and select the types of merchandise to sell at its 8,200 locations.

Discover new insights with spatial patterns and relationships. GIS, location analysis, and data integration services enable businesses to improve supply chain visibility, reduce risk, and better balance production to demand. Cisco uses GIS for accurate visualization of its Global Service Supply Chain footprint and operational capabilities by linking it to its business environment.

National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is using GIS for dairy planning and identifying new locations for milk collection centers. GIS helps to identify new sites for setting up collection centers with 1000 liters or more collection capacity and villages which can be covered by these collection centers without compromising the milk quality and maximizing milk collection.

Enrich the value of your existing data with location, Businesses and IT organizations can use a GIS platform to integrate mapping and geospatial analysis into business systems (e.g., BI, ERP, and CRM). This pattern not only allows everyone in an organization to easily make maps with their business data but also supports the integration of traditional business data with the other types of GIS information traditionally housed within the GIS department.

As location information is becoming pervasive, so is the use of GIS. Spatial decision-making must get embedded into the business processes and workflows of the organizations – both government and private sector. It should be an integral part of the IT strategy of every CIO and become the core of the decision support systems of the organization. The popularity of mobile technologies and the advent of new business apps are enabling enterprise users to remain connected; GIS or a location platform will only make those apps more useful and friendly for decision-making and open new communication channels for employees, partners, and customers.

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