August 10, 2008
Quantified support - geographical context
Geography matters - location matters. What you sell and how you are doing is intimately related to the demographics surrounding the store and the characteristics of your product. If this is on the money then...
The human observer does not have the capacity to comprehend the multitude of variables that constitute a market. Even if your business has only 10 or 20 stores - and you visit each monthly - how well do you really understand the pulse of each location? Quantifiable information in support of your observations are the key. Thus location becomes the anchor connecting your point-of-sale data while establishing links to Neilson Market data, census, survey, even your coupon mailing...
The point being that observing a place regularly can in fact provide a false sense of understanding that place. The world is constantly changing - economics of neighborhoods and cities evolve - children grow older... Assuming you have an understanding of a place is a risk. Comically, the memory plays tricks about location... Remember when you were young? The snow was deeper.... Change. You. You are taller now - it isn't that the snow was deeper. Demographics change and so does your market.
Quantifiable support to desicions based on location enabled integration of key data - not only will you see your performance more clearly you will understand the explanation and can thus plan and anticipate the next opportunity more accurately.
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Posted by John D. Corbett at 8:45 AM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2008
So many way location helps
I found myself in a casual conversation with a senior executive of a long-established metals and forge company. Ever curious, our 'what do you do' conversation turned into a vibrant conversation around how to stimulate growth in such a traditional business.
Simply put, his 'customers' were involved in long chains of value add - from the end product back through multiple sub-contracted specialty machine-shops. Over the years this executive had accumulated more than 120,000 names and companies... But had no real way understand who worked where and with whom - the geographic context of this 'social network' solves a major part of this. Simply mapping these 120,000 - and seeing the 'customers of the customers' in their location context.
These machine-shops were, in effect, very much part of his customer relationship though in the absence of geography the connections were not obvious.
Location matters - directly or indirectly.
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Posted by John D. Corbett at 3:00 PM | Comments (0)
July 8, 2008
BI - Closing Starbucks??
What news! Closing 600 stores must hurt. Makes me think about which ones? and the article in the Seattle paper kind of probes this sentiment...
My point is only this: geographic context - the foundation of location intelligence - is not static. Losing site of the changes not only in 'store sales' but in the demographic and competitive environment in which the store functions, will reward you with failure. Yes, Failure.
BI is the specialization of information to pay attention to your sales... Location Intelligence is the capacity to see the rest of the story - the geographic context of competition and demographics (and yes, sales) and all change all the time. Geo-analytics and geo-visualization are a rising wave - catch it before the competition does and drives you to failure...
Posted by John D. Corbett at 1:30 PM | Comments (0)
