Small businesses continue to remain the backbone of the country. In the United States, 32.5 million small businesses are operating, accounting for 46.8 percent of the private workforce. Unfortunately, the increasing popularity of online retailers and big-box stores still plagues small companies, especially as interests continue to shift and evolve. As rapidly changing interests continue to plague companies further, small businesses are forced to put themselves in a better position to meet market demands.
Location intelligence is a trusted methodology among large retailers, offering insight into how individuals, products, services, and materials move worldwide. This process can help economic development, including a deeper understanding of market trends, foot traffic patterns, logistics, and consumer behaviors.
What is Location Intelligence?
Location intelligence is the visualization and analysis of geospatial data. This analysis enhances insight, understanding, decision-making, and further prediction. Many organizations rely on geographic information systems to create comprehensive location intelligence. Adding layers of geographic data (like traffic, demographics, or weather) to the information can help organizations identify where an event occurred, why it’s happening, and gain insight into the primary cause.
What are geographic information systems?
A geographic information system is a spatial system that develops, manages, interprets, and maps all data. GIS will connect data to a physical map, incorporating location data with descriptive content. This information offers a foundation for mapping and analyzing information. GIS allows business owners to develop and understand patterns, including relationships and geographic context. Most companies see improved communication and efficiency overall.
Understanding the Benefits of Location Intelligence
Integrating Sales and Marketing
Business owners can use location intelligence to understand consumers better, whether prospective or current, achieving brand awareness, increases in sales, and improved customer experience. Using these insights can optimize a company’s approach to customers. For example, a small business trying to attract a specific niche consumer base can harvest the demographics to strengthen the current connection. Locations consumers visit will demonstrate what matters most to them, particularly where interests remain.
Building Supply Chain and Logistics
Companies need to develop a strong connection with supply chain risk management. With location intelligence, a business can identify and monitor critical locations within the supply chain for irregularities in workforce activity. This heightened visibility also makes reliable predictions of disruptions to the supply chain, helping owners mitigate these obstructions at the source.
A business owner who previously held minimal visibility within the supply chain can access identifying information that pinpoints any bottleneck. These details are essential to correct before getting worse.
Encompassing Business Operations
Using location intelligence to offer guidance on strategy positively impacts business operations, explicitly reducing costs. This data encourages increasingly accurate targets and helps personalize the delivery of the messaging and consumer experience. With less trial-and-error for the business, prices are significantly reduced overall.
This intelligence offers a potential window where prospective and interested consumers with similar profiles currently exist. These details can also guide local owners into additional store locations, particularly when a business is considering expansion. For instance, a local furniture store uncovers an over-index of home improvers within 50 miles of the site. These statistics suggest a secondary location within that proximity could be a wise growth tactic worth exploring.
Developing Competitive Intelligence
A business can also utilize location demographics to understand how the company is performing against local competitors. For instance, businesses can analyze and interpret how foot traffic compares to competitors to establish how many consumers are shopping the competitor is attracting versus their location. These statistics offer strong indications of where the company stands within the market.
Likewise, a business could explore where a competitor’s customer visits before or after the store location. These details can integrate into various campaigns to persuade customers out of the current sales cycle.
Conclusion
As small businesses are the pillar of our economy, any insight into their industry is essential for success. Location intelligence connects businesses of all sizes with the information around them. By detailing critical aspects of the buying process, companies can help mitigate any foreseeable problems before they become long-standing or compromising issues. Location intelligence benefits virtually every industry, from small businesses to large enterprises. Knowing how to harvest and leverage that information sets a company apart.
