Geo-Marketing makes you more competitive.

IF there is a physical cluster - a group of neighborhoods, part of a city, perhaps even a region - where your product is or should be doing well, use this information to amplify your marketing campaign. Performance can be measured - testing areas for responses to various media.

With location intelligence you can take the location of existing customers and build a psycho-demographic profile... then FIND all the areas that fit. Next, you can select the zipcodes with concentrations of your profile presence - and you can then mass mail or target mail a list of people inside a small area (create a buzz).

Whether it be traditional media or something '2.0' - utilizing the signal that is location (starts with address...) means you know more and can manage better your target list...

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.

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.

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...

Location intelligence is more than 'where you are' - but such "presence" information is acutely valuable.

Location to a business is also valuable - and the signal is already embedded in your POS data.

Location intelligence and BI - the decision driving interpretability of BI data on a map = success.

Mark writes that "BI is about turning data into information" and he correctly points out that simply putting data on a map accomplishes this. But there is more!

Location intelligence is more than simply mapping BI data. Location intelligence includes 'geo-analytics' - starting from the simple: show me the stores with sales > x AND which are within 5 miles of competitor A. To complex: cluster analysis on sales by SKU and including weighting by both market demographics and competition.

Geo-analytics introduce a whole new opportunity to extract truly decision driving information from your data - but simply mapping your data on Virtual Earth or Google Earth is a great first step.

A 'Bashup' - hmm, not sold on the term but what a powerful competitive advantage!

2) The signal of location - in your data anyway - is pretty powerful...

I heard a fascinating statistic this past weekend: 95% of business decisions are based on data from Excel. If true, then location (where things are sold for example) is really powerful simply because without mapping your stores and looking at the same spreadsheet data through the lens of a map, you cannot see clusters, boundaries or gaps - gaps being no data (try finding 'no data' on something NOT in your spreadsheet!!).

Moreover, location allows you to integrate multiple sources of data: your sales and the location of your competitors... Might explain - might shed new light - on performance if you knew one set of stores had competitor stores nearby vs. those that do not.

interactive queries

(e.g., show me sales of product line x, by store, last 30 days compared to same 30 days last year)

and 'filtering'

(e.g., Where are all the areas that have more than 1000 families with income > $75,000 and 1000 females under 5 years of age).

Mapping is a 'skin' to your data - from hitting spreadsheets to POS databases.

The curious thing is that the map or geography based visual has been around for 30 years (GIS science!) but is not yet in the hands of those who could make the most of it - business people looking at their performance and their opportunities.

The great value of location based intelligence is simply that most data have a location signal... Why not use it? There is actually little cost beyond some software - the data you already have are filled with 'location' intelligence.

Location Intelligence puts "where" into your decisions - location is a signal already in your data (the address of your stores, customers, and plants/facilities is enough!) and if you are not making maps - visualizing these data in their natural geographic arrangement - you are missing an incredible opportunity to manage your performance and find new opportunities. And when your competition uses map based visualizations? They will see things you can't.

Simply put, you can't see clusters or boundaries in a spreadsheet - nor can you see gaps ( = where you are not selling). Even trends are hard to spot.

Maps are 'fun' - easy to interpret - and offer a powerful visual method to support insight.

Where (no pun intended!) do we go from here?

A picture of data - a 'static' map - can be useful but history is proof that such pictures-of-data too limit decision making processes and such maps stay in the background.

The key is to interact with your data through the lens of a map - of Geography. An operating picture of your whole business emerges.

My frustration with non-interactive mapping is long and deep - but there is much activity in mapping today - and Location Intelligence has rapidly emerged as a value-laden use of existing data.

Gotta love the awareness Google Maps and Google Earth bring! The competition from Microsoft (Virtual Earth) and others (Yahoo Maps, MapQuest etc) is really heating up. Much will be attemped and there is much value to be found in utilization of the existing location signal in your data!