Putting Business Intelligence On The Map

Comment Article IT Analysis – Putting Business Intelligence on the Map By Louella Fernandes, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Ltd As consumers, we are inundated by maps as they increasingly becoming an intrinsic part of everyday life. From web based services for driving directions and portals such as Microsoft’s Live Local, Virtual Earth and Google Earth to consumer applications such as GPS watches and in-vehicle navigation, we are exposed to a wealth of location-based or geospatial information. This growing consumer awareness is beginning to stimulate commercial interest in the application of geospatial data for business use. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have long offered the capability to analyse geospatial data. Geospatial data refers to information that can be geographically referenced in either 2 or 3 dimensions, that is, any data that can be mapped such as geographic features, business points, households, demographics and consumption patterns. GIS software has been supplied by companies such as ESRI and MapInfo for many years, with ESRI’s first commercial GIS software designed to run on minicomputers, ArcInfo, dating back to 1982. Using a GIS, geospatial data can be created, placed on a digital map and visualised, compared and analysed. This is the essence of geospatial analysis. Traditionally, Geographic Information Systems are based on proprietary technology and are geography centric – the value is in the geographic data. The utility industry, for example, has long been using GIS to maintain location information on their electricity, gas and water networks. Traditional GIS is also expertuser oriented and is typically deployed departmentally as either a stand-alone or networked desktop application. Today, enterprise geospatial applications have evolved from these specialist GIS tools, and are designed to analyse and model business decisions using geospatial information. Like Business Intelligence (BI), enterprise geospatial systems are business process driven, integrating with ERP, CRM and other enterprise applications. As much as 80% of an organisation’s data can be associated with a geographic location; this

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can include customer or competitor locations, store locations and sales territories. When viewing this data on a map, as opposed to a spreadsheet, trends become easier to spot. The key to the power of geospatial-enabled applications is with the data. For example, by adding demographic information to an organisation’s existing business data, maps become truly interactive through the capability for users to drill down to data associated with any given location. What is the average income in areas where the highest performing stores are located? How do sales vary by population level or by proximity to competitors? Such information is extremely valuable when, for example, planning new store locations. The benefits of geospatial analysis are now being realised across a range of industries including manufacturing, retail, public planning, financial services and telecoms network planning. The power of geospatial analysis has not been ignored by business intelligence vendors. Oracle Locator, for example, is part of Oracles Database 10g and offers the functionality to manage spatial data. Oracle Spatial provides capabilities for geocoding, routing, data mining and spatial analysis. IBM also offers spatial capabilities with DB2, through the Spatial Extender, based on ESRI technology. Pure play BI vendors such as Business Objects, Hyperion, Information Builders and SAS Institute have collaborated with ESRI to integrate geospatial capabilities into their platforms. Similarly, both Cognos and Microstrategy offer integration with MapInfo geospatial technology. So with many BI vendors offering integration with geospatial technology, how close are we to the location enabled enterprise? MapInfo in particular aims to widen the adoption of it’s so called “location intelligence” applications to mainstream business users. Although its strongest sectors are retail and the public sector, it is seeing the fastest growth in the financial services and insurance markets, organisations which have not been traditional users of GIS.

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Comment Article The potential for business users to benefit from geospatial data without having to be GIS specialists is significant. However, whilst Business Intelligence (BI) is generally considered now to be more valued at the strategic level, geospatial business applications are largely still a tactical investment. The key challenge for MapInfo and similar vendors is to demonstrate to the C level executives the value of geospatial technology and how it can ultimately deliver a competitive edge to their organisation, by enabling all levels within an organisation to benefit from geospatial data. In terms of technology, the future development of geospatial applications will be primarily driven by service-oriented architectures (SOA). For example, inventory control using RFID represents a real opportunity to integrate real time data with geospatial technology. Similarly, the ability to view geospatial data on mobile devices will further boost the trend for requiring real time data. It is likely that geospatial capabilities will be more easily and costeffectively integrated within enterprise systems that are based on SOA. By linking geospatial applications to online databases, web services also improves the updating of source geographic data which is often a time consuming and expensive task. MapInfo is already addressing this area through Envinsa, a scaleable web services platform for delivering mapping, geocoding, routing and other enhanced spatial capabilities across the enterprise. Envinsa is centrally managed, giving a consistent view of data, and can make legacy systems more “location aware” by adding geospatial functionality to any application which uses location information.

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The future for the geospatial enabled enterprise may rest with the BI and database vendors, and vendors such as MapInfo may gain more traction in the enterprise market through building further on its integration with database and mainstream BI tools. At the mass market end, Google, Yahoo and MSN will continue to provide free geospatial functionality, and the availability of Microsoft MapPoint at a low price point will increase the awareness of geospatial analysis. Indeed, both expense and ease of use are factors which may limit adoption of geospatial applications across an enterprise. MapInfo will need to decide if it wishes to complement the mass market offerings with its own lower cost entry level product aimed at specific geospatial tasks. This could enable it to open the door for further sales and increase awareness of the benefits of enterprise wide geospatial technology. After all, the technology is already here, the challenge is to educate the enterprise about the commercial potential of applying geography to business data.

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Comment Article

About Quocirca Quocirca is one of Europe’s leading independent industry analyst firms. One of its biggest assets is the core team of highly experienced analysts drawn from both the corporate and the vendor communities. This team prides itself on maintaining a bigger picture view of what’s going on in the IT and communications marketplaces. This allows all of Quocirca’s activities to be carried out in the context of the real world and avoids distractions with fads, fashions and the nuts and bolts of specific technologies. Quocirca’s focus has always been the point of intersection at which IT meets “the business”.

Quocirca Services The insight and experience that comes from working as an industry analyst as well as a practitioner allows the Quocirca team to contribute significantly to IT Vendors, Service Providers and Corporate clients. To this end, it provides a range of consulting and advisory services. Details of these, along with some of Quocirca’s latest analysis, may be obtained by visiting http://www.quocirca.com Quocirca’s primary research involves the surveying of many thousands of technical and business end users each quarter, analyzing their perceptions of the possible impact of emerging, evolving and maturing technologies on their businesses.

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