Location Intelligence - Top 12 Industries

Location Intelligence (LI) - the ability to map and compare your spatially significant data with your more traditional metrics captured within a Business Intelligence (BI) solution - has a vast array of potential applications across many industries and job functions.

Or, as industry veteran and respected analyst Wayne Ecerkson put it in a recent blog post, Location Intelligence is More Than A Map:

"Location intelligence, also known as spatial analytics, creates maps that enable users to view the relationship of objects in space and perform a variety of spatial calculations, such as, 'How long will it take to drive from Detroit to Cleveland?' or 'What percentage of high income customers are located within a 15 minute drive of this store?' Or 'What's my risk exposure to a hurricane that plows through Dade County, Florida?'"

Here are some prominent examples of LI's usefulness and application by industry:

The mining and exploration industry: Being able to track, plot and understand the location of infrastructure and resources (or potential resources) is critical for corporations in the mining sector to properly assess the profitability of any given exploration or venture. ...

Insurance companies: Assessing risk enables insurance companies to structure a reliable, fair and profitable business model. Understanding the location of customers in relation to other location-based data, such as crime rates (car theft) or weather patterns (frequency of severe weather systems) by city, region or state, enables insurers to identify high or low risk cases and develop marketing strategies, policies and pricing models accordingly.

Airports and airlines: Mapping the location of aircraft is critical for obvious reasons. Further, combing the location of aircraft with other operational data can expose and answer critical questions. For example, what's the maintenance record of the aircraft closest to a particular airport?

Healthcare providers: Understanding the operational status of healthcare providers and institutions from a locational perspective can lead to more efficient practices and higher standards of patient care ... both for clinical and financial applications.

Retail outlets: Presenting location-based data allows retailers to uncover relationships between stores, products and customer types - across a range of different parameters or metrics - that affect sales performance. Tracking stock levels also enable retail operators to coordinate warehouse deliveries to ensure individual shop fronts are always well stocked.

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