The Unexpected Growth of Location Intelligence

Editor’s note: This article is drawn from the diverse lineup of the WhereNext webcast featuring Verizon, Walmart, and Steamboat Ski Resort.

GIS technology is surfacing in unexpected places, and business professionals are taking notice. At companies large and small, in departments across the enterprise, GIS analysts and data scientists are helping make operations faster, smarter, and safer—all while bringing clarity to strategic decisions.

As bootstrapped startups use location analytics to become household names, companies already considered household names are taking it to a higher level. Many use GIS tools to assess where assets are underperforming, where supply chains must expand to support growth, and how demographic trends will affect capital investments.

Creating location intelligence has been a standard practice for some corporate teams for years. Among others, it’s an emerging form of business intelligence—an expansion of the decision support they provide their colleagues.

Now, GIS is becoming the engine of choice for an increasingly prominent corporate team—the global security operations center, or GSOC. With real-time maps of company operations and the proximity of natural hazards and other threats, corporate security teams help safeguard the business and its people. In contrast, tech laggards struggle to sift through an avalanche of unorganized, raw data.

The Breadth of Unexpected GIS  

Location technology has reached well beyond the boardroom and the GSOC.

If you’ve skied lately, you may have been the unwitting beneficiary of GIS. It’s the geographic brain supporting many mountain operations, including drone teams, snow patrols, and maintenance crews. When response time is critical to health, safety, and efficiency, these teams rely on location intelligence to understand where to be and what they’ll encounter when they arrive.

That, in short, is what every business leader hopes for. Knowing how the company is situated in relation to a fast-moving storm, a once-in-a-generation change in consumer sentiment, or its competitors can make the difference between effective response and lost opportunity. Which explains why location intelligence keeps showing up in unexpected places.

Join WhereNext as we from Verizon, Walmart, and Steamboat Ski Resort for a deeper look at the innovative and unexpected ways GIS is powering the business world.