How Businesses are Using GIS

When you look at GIS applications, there are a lot of references to land use and environmental projects. It did not take long for businesses to start realizing that they could use spatial analyses. Nowadays, location-based information is crucial for companies to know more than where customers work, live, play, and spend. Business solutions need to be fast, reliable, and cost-effective. Enhancing your business data to create simple maps and analyses will lead to more innovative, better business decisions. 

GIS stands for Geospatial Information Systems and makes it simple to do complex things such as finding a car dealership, new store, or bank in the most profitable place. How else could you understand what products people really want? And make sure they are in stock and at the right location. Your business data will reveal patterns and relationships that can better help you manage staff, resources, and logistics. Applying GIS will raise the bar on customer expectations and improve service regardless of if you are a small startup or Wall Street giant. Understanding all aspects of your operations will reach every level of decision-makers in real-time. It is one of the critical factors to being successful as a business and staying successful. So in this article, we will talk about how companies are already using GIS. 

Digital mapping

One of the first GIS maps for business and humanitarian purposes was done by Dr. John Snow, who worked and lived in the Soho section of London. He held the unpopular belief that cholera was spread by contaminated water. When the outbreak began in 1854, he mapped new cases as they occurred and was able to show that clusters of the new cases were centered around the Broad Street pump, which was the source of water. The handle to the pump was removed, which ended the cholera outbreak.

Mapping is one of the main functions of GIS, and it gives the users a visual interpretation of data. This gives different users the ability to communicate using these satellite maps. You do not necessarily need to be a skilled cartographer to create maps with GIS.

Transport planning

Today, getting products and people from point A to point B takes more than planning a route and watching traffic reports. We want it fast, reliable, and cost-effective. GIS gives you the ability to improve services by understanding travel patterns, monitoring noise regulations, and projecting capital improvement projects. It also helps you manage street sign assets and share data in real-time. Road congestion causes delays and potentially missing your delivery windows. Managing deliveries and supply chains are key to meeting customer expectations, improving services, and more importantly, identifying waste and cost-saving opportunities. Understanding all aspects of your operation will help improve overall safety and security and be crucial in crisis and first responders. When there are many moving parts to an operation, GIS brings understanding to top management and those tracking inventory.

Disaster and Business Continuity Planning

Companies now have the ability to make informed decisions by viewing location and building assets together with emergency data such as disaster areas and weather patterns. Using GIS, companies can now get a holistic view of their performance, analyzing all the data collected from different departments.

Customer segmentation marketing

GIS provides different businesses with a better understanding of the demographics and psychographics of their customer base within a specific area. By seeing this data on a map, companies can better plan their marketing efforts for better results. It helps them provide answers to questions such as:

• Who is their target audience?
• Where are they located?
• What do they like? 

Banking

Financial institutions are already embracing GIS for hyper-local market developments. As more people adopt mobile banking options and spend less time in a branch location, banks are looking for ways to understand and service an increasingly digital customer base. Using GIS branch and ATM networks are being optimized so that the bank can continue to service their existing customers while lowering operational costs.

As GIS technology continues to advance, it will provide businesses with more applications. So companies need to make full use of GIS to understand their customers, surpass competitors, and provide the best services.