I wrote this yesterday at the AWhere Blog: Geo-Analytics Transforms CA Politics. It’s a story told in ever-increasing zoom about how the Proposition 8 opponents Google Mapped the pro-Prop8 donors. An interesting and intense demonstration of how location intelligence and mapping creates actionable insight.
Final Screen Shot: Street View, Anyone?
We’ve been talking about location intelligence and geo-analytics for a while now, both here and at the AWhere blog. As the economy shifts into epochal distress, every point of leverage much be engaged to create or maintain a competitive advantage. The other choice is the drama felt by every company gracing the front page of the business section of their local newspaper (if that company is still in business).
New tools — like AWhere’s suite of location intelligence software and services — are evolving just in time to keep pace with the increasing complexity of business. As we face a new turbulence (it turns out the volatility of volatility is increasing) in the markets, it’s going to take the ability to ask — and quickly answer — new questions from your data in order to keep pace.
As I wrote at the AWhere Blog:
AWhere President Jim Pollock has had most of his attention on our CPG Visions, a custom tool produced for category managers and business strategists in consumer packaged goods and retail. He points out that it would take the average analyst roughly 200 hours of focused analysis to produce a report including the level of complexity of our CPG Visions output, which maps incoming data from WalMart’s Retail Link service, and correlates it to Neilsen demographic data along with National Weather Service weather forecasts (more detail here). Given the workload of a small (and shrinking) analysis team, it’s the kind of work that cannot necessarily be justified on a weekly basis.
But once it’s only a matter of looking at this information on an interactive map, the ability to ask “what if” scenarios and plan for multiple futures becomes a very real business practice.
Business intelligence dashboards provides a mere fraction of this ability, but the principle is the same. When you can see your data — over time, and correlated with external info — and then ask it questions and pose scenarios, you gain a new level of understanding about your business, and that competitive advantage to lift your business during this crazy time.
I think we can expect many discussions in the next year about IT as a transformative force for business in these challenging economic times.
Well, it took me a while. I came off my game for almost two weeks.
But on a drive home from an inspiring meeting with Kevin (Johansen, my Business Catapult business partner and long time co-consipirator), I fully and completely transcended (and included, as the integral school teaches) the financial crisis. That is to say, the crisis is a moment in time, and will be over sometime soon. The future will have to include the history and (future) present of the impact of the crisis, but we will move beyond it. So I am THERE.
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
What am I talking about?
It’s been a great summer over at AWhere, where breakthroughs in geo-analysis, location intelligence and busines map mashups have come one right after another.
What’s the nuance?
The power of location intelligence and data visualization is coming on strong. With projects touching the likes of WalMart and the UN Foundation, AWhere is poised to really take off in the next six months.
We expect that business mapping and next-generation of geo-web applications will become one of the big business process stories of 2009. Thought leaders are on board. The system conditions have changed. Tidal wave to follow.
News junkies, commodity traders and climate change scientists are all tracking last week’s midwest flooding, noting the confluence of impacts, including global commodity prices, US food costs, regional property damage, ethanol futures. All of this is, of course, written in the context of the upcoming US election, and all the subterfuge within.
Over at AWhere (more here, here and here), they spent the week putting together a pretty cool package that allows individuals to make maps specific to any frame of reference. Rather than relying on the media or on other mapmakers to tell you how to think about the flooding, you can interact with the map, ask it questions, and determine for yourself the impact on your business, life, community or other perspective.
What’s the nuance?
Data visualization is one of the most important frameworks for gaining insight. But professional mapmakers have owned a near-monopoly over the frame of reference since mapping began. Now the power is in your hands. Google Maps, Google Earth and Virtual Earth have set the stage for interacting with maps. AWhere takes this evolution to the next step, and lets you plot your data (as many layers as you can generate) on to a map, creating your own view of things.
Although we’re not known to report on every SEC filing in the known universe, the recent news that Digital Global filed for an IPO (the first in many steps before they go public) is interesting on a couple levels:
What do you think about their prospects? Would you go public today?
John Corbett turned me on to a good article at Tech Target about business-focused, web-based, location-aware data mashups, which the author terms ‘bashups.’ Here’s the nut:
BI systems are already very good at sifting through (and/or aggregating) huge volumes of data and turning it into information. If we combine this with mapping, we can get a huge increase in the understandability of the information for very little effort.
What’s the nuance? Continue reading
Inventing a new market category to go with your new business is exhausting and time consuming. This I have learned from experience. Painful experience.
So, when I sit down to talk through messaging and the slow pace of marketplace adoption with John Corbett of AWhere, he can end up a bit exacerbated, which I understand — it’s tough to be able to see a revolutionary shift incredibly clearly while others nod their head and continue along their previous path. (insert more painful experience here)
McKinsey, along with the rest of the top-dollar business analysts recognize that the fastest way to create business value is the management of information. Visualization of information not only speeds analysis, but also provides comprehension of trends that escapes even the most rabid Excel geeks.
Location provides a meaningful signal amidst the noise of business analysis. Customers (and the rest of us, as well) exist in the context of location — your competitors’ location, proximity to transportation, places where it rains, snows and gets very hot. Do these things affect their purchasing? Only all of the time.
AWhere tunes business analysts (and the rest of us, as well) into the signal of location and how it affects their business. Meanwhile, businesses spend millions of dollars generating new information, without adopting some simple tools (in this case, $250 software) that provides them with a clear multiplier of the value of existing data.
Why is it hard for people to see things in a new way? Continue reading
Ah, AWhere. If you read this regularly (and who isn’t?), you are going to hear a lot about AWhere. But those posts will be talking at some level about what AWhere does, or some cool new application. Let this serve as the ‘what’ post, which I’ll reference time and again.
AWhere is a mapping software company based in Golden, Colorado. John Corbett is their CEO, and has become a friend, co-conspirator, and is now also a client. AWhere creates a new market segment, allowing any user of Excel to create rich, dynamic geographically accurate maps. Previously, large organizations like Monsanto and the Department of Defense hired PhD specialists in GIS, and bought 5-figure licenses for arcane software that puts information into maps accurately. Now you can do it from your laptop.
The benefit of this are really twofold. There are myriad applications in business intelligence and analysis, and equally many in the building and sharing understanding.