Geographical Information Systems, or GIS is a blossoming technology that’s becoming more crucial to businesses and our everyday lives.
From agricultural construction to urban planning, GIS helps us by giving information about the Earth.
In short, it’s a technology that helps us understand and interact with the land surrounding us, helping us plan better in different aspects of life.
But what is GIS, and how can it help us, especially when it comes to improving our businesses?
What is GIS?
A geographic information system is computer software that helps us store, check, display, and analyze data related to positions on the Earth’s surface.
By helping us understand the different data that the GIS gathers, it helps us better understand how to help individuals and organizations regarding spatial patterns and relationships that relate to the Earth.
More importantly, however, GIS is a crucial part of spatial data infrastructure, which the White House categorizes as the technology, policies, human resources, and other related activities that acquire, process, and analyze spatial data.
In layman’s terms, GIS can use any information relevant to or about the location.
It can then be expressed in many different ways, like latitude, longitude, ZIP code, address, etc.
It could also help us gather and analyze data regarding population, income, education level, vegetation, landscape, soil type, etc.
One common use of GIS is how it helps people compare locations that include pollution sites, factories, and locations sensitive to pollution, to help water supply companies better plan their manufacturing and other processes crucial to distributing good quality water supplies in the area.
And the best thing about it is that GIS is a service commonly offered in industries. In fact, there are already a lot of companies using this software along with other data-gathering services like IntelliSpatial.
But with all that said, you might be wondering how it can be used to improve your business. Here’s how it helps:
Data Gathering:
As the adage goes, “Data is king,” data is very crucial for a business since it helps them better understand their customers regarding their buying patterns, the trends they’re following, the things they’re interested in, etc., which we will be talking about in the following points.
Identifying Brand Preferences:
On a broad level, GIS can help businesses track their customers’ social media activity and identify their brand preferences based on the local area’s geography.
For example, they can use the data from GIS to help them decide where to house their manufacturing plant in an area with a small population.
This way, they can monopolize the market in that area and have their customer base established almost instantly.
Customer Segmentation:
When it comes down to it, a business aims to give what the customer wants when and where they need it as soon as possible.
However, to effectively do this, they need to know what the customer wants and needs.
That said, using GIS analytics along with their current market research, they could give the things their customers want and need before they even realize it.
And since not all customers are the same, they can use geospatial analytics to enable them to do a more sophisticated customer segmentation based on the demographics.
This way, they can create an ultra-targeted marketing campaign based on the GIS data and analytics.
With this, the business can retain the loyalty of its old customers and even attract new ones.
Cultural Trends:
Another good example of you can use GIS is to identify and analyze the current cultural trend of an area.
For example, let’s say you’re getting output from GIS about how a specific part of the city has more sales of Hispanic food items compared to other parts.
With this data, you can adjust your operations accordingly and make informed decisions regarding your next market move.
Not only that, but since, as we all know, trends come and go, with the help of GIS, we can also estimate the sales in the immediate future if you decide to go with Hispanic food items for your business.
Or, if we want to be more thorough, you can also use GIS to see which holidays you should sell Hispanic food items or any items that might catch on in different seasons.
Improved Delivery:
Another good use of GIS technology is how it can identify fast routes that your staff can use for delivery.
Of course, this data is very helpful for many businesses like restaurants or parcel organizations.
With its help in increasing the efficiency of delivery, your delivery staff can prevent excessive traveling, cost to time, and ensure that your food or items are delivered on time and safely. It’s all about efficiency, and GIS can give you that.
Conclusion:
GIS is a very helpful piece of technology that has a lot of applications not just in our everyday lives but in our businesses as well.
That said, if your business is having issues identifying your customer’s buying habits, the trends they’re following, or just general issues with the delivery efficiency of your business, then GIS can help you with that.
