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GIS cruises through business lanes
Applications
GIS is a technology to interpret demographic trends, manage resources and model
consumer’s trend. The business of mapping includes the map data, it’s property
like demographic and other user specific data. It helps manage spatial data within a
relational data base management system. It can support wide scale, multi-user-application,
enables larger data sets, unifies business and spatial data and allows server-side
processing. Information discovery is related to direct marketing, distribution logistics,
merchandise planning and site selection. It can help competitive analysis that in turn
will reduce the competitive threat and enable to understand the relationship between
competition and their operations in the specific location. It can pin point the most
profitable location. Trade Area Analysis can be done with the system to know from where
the customers are coming. GIS use in Financial Services basically aims at property
management, regulatory compliance, risk management, target marketing and branch location.
The distribution Planning will get products from the warehouse to distributors. The
analysis of Demography of any region will ensure that you are targeting the right customer
base. It helps in network maintenance in insurance, municipal planning, disaster
management, emergency services, public safety, census analysis, land use profile and
environmental planning, etc. There are several benefits of mapping in business such as
optimise customer acquisition through precision marketing programme, maximise customer
relation, lower overhead costs, etc.
The involved in retailing must understand the nature and geographic
distribution of customer base, thereby providing a fundamental basis for establishing
demographic profiles, defining trade areas, predicting demands, developing marketing
strategies, and evaluating market penetration and potential. Recently there has occurred a
switch in focus to the marketing uses of GIS and their dissemination into more and more
departments within the company’s organisational framework. Decision making has moved
to a vertical as well as horizontal flow of information, where groups collaborate on
planning issues and then transfer their ideas and inferences up a corporate ladder to the
company’s final decision makers. GIS as a spatial tool of analysis facilitates the
planning processes and ultimately the decision making at the highest corporate levels. GIS
is now being used as a strategic resource which can have an impact throughout a given
organisation.
GIS can be a tool for strategic planning in marketing organisations. A
GIS database query allows a business planner to identify and locate residences with
incomes greater than a defined floor, within a specific age range, and distributed around
a retail outlet within a given driven time threshold. The locations of these potential
customers are then used for direct micro-marketing campaigns which are utilised by mailing
materials to those residences which exhibit aggregate characteristics as defined prior to
query for those potential consumers. GIS also empowers a planner to better understand the
spatial distribution of a given market by locating existing customers’ residences for
a given facility. This process can be carried out for a series of outlets after which the
relative strength of customer clusters with in each district, a trade area is defined by
purchasing behaviours and the series of customers’ residential locations.
Constraints
Data availability is a major hurdle in India. Even if data is
available, it is not GIS friendly format. Maps availability, border restriction and their
copyright are some of the hurdles faced by the GIS industry. Market research companies do
not use maps. In India only a few companies have opted for GIS. This is partly because the
software packages are still relatively undeveloped in India. Apart from this, integration
of data with existing systems, cost of data maintenance, difficulties in quantifying
payback period of business geographics, etc. are other problems.
Another problem is the lack of awareness in academic institutions about
the potential use of GIS on business applications. Presently, there is not much
integration between and GIS is academic institutions. The Information Technology
Departments of these institutes should integrate GIS in their curriculum.
In Australia, according to a research conducted by a consultancy group,
less than 1% of Australia’s corporate sector is currently using the GIS technology
basically due to high cost of GIS technology. Moreover, the people with right kind of
skills is also very costly. Another reason for failure is of GIS in Australia is that it
is not being taught as part of any university business course in Australia.
The Business Schools
It is not surprising that top business schools such as Wharton, Havard and Clemson are
using business geographics in classrooms, computer labs and research centres. But even
though business geographics - the fastest growing applications of GIS technology is taught
in some programmes, its overall penetrations into business schools is low, even in ore
developed countries of the west.
In congruence with the trends worldwide, the GIS has still to make its
pressure felt in Indian business schools. Some initiatives have been taken at the
economics, business management institutions such as Indira Gandhi Institute of Development
Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, Indian Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad and
Bangalore and Indian Institute of Rural Management (IIRM), an and for using this
technology. However, these initiatives have largely remained confined to using GIS for
formulating macro economic policies for sustainable development of a region. These
initiatives have not yet transformed themselves in developing GIS based micro-level plans.
Some schools such an Amity Business School. Noida, Department of Business Economics,
University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi and Faculty of management Studies have tried
to expose the students to this new exciting technology through invited lectures from the
industry, project work, etc.
The Probable Scenario
As GIS becomes established in a variety of marketing contexts, the pace of development is
largely determined by three considerations
- Ability to structure and manipulate multiplying sources into useful information.
- Development of computer software to handle different classes of geographic problems.
- Prospects for disseminating developments in spatial data handling
Pretty maps may not be the answer to everyone’s nightmare, but it is GIS that
consolidates the facts into a more interpretable form. The user has the option of looking
at reams of paper output or perhaps, just one map.
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