Boston, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/24/2012 --You want to know who your customers are, what they buy, how often they buy and where they come from. You also need to manage your products, stock levels – on the shop floor and in the warehouse – and relationships with your suppliers. And, of course, store performance – which are your best performing stores, staff, regions and product types or categories by store and region? The list is almost limitless.

So, you have a lot of data. But data on its own is worthless. What do you do with it? How do you explore your different data types, sets and share it with those who matter most – your decision-makers and stakeholders – to gain new insights and discover previously hidden opportunities?

You need to be able to map your location-based data. You need Location Intelligence (LI) – over 80 percent of your data has a spatial element, according to global analyst and advisory firm IDC. But what’s LI, and what’s it got to do with you, your business and your data?

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Well, LI enables you to apply geographic contexts to business data – LI combines location-based data with traditional metrics captured within a Business Intelligence (BI) system. It helps solve business problems by providing context to business data. LI also enables you to see, understand and act on new business opportunities by uncovering previously unidentified patterns in your data, or crucial relationships between different data sources and types.

Or, as IDC put it: “Location intelligence is defined as the capacity to organize and understand complex data through the use of geographic relationships. LI organizes business and geographically referenced data to reveal the relationship of location to people, events, transactions, facilities, and assets.”

8 ways Location Intelligence can empower retailers

You’re an area manager for retail conglomerate Mega Store. The northern sector of your region is underperforming. The situation demands your personal attention. All options must be considered – including store closures or relocations.

The ability to understand the “where” of your retail data – not just that “what”, “how”, “when” and “why” – gives you capacity to develop ultra-effective marketing and operational strategies via multi-layered maps. And, applying LI to logistical data enables you to unite customers, suppliers and infrastructure, to ensure the most effective use of resources.

Using LI to understand your location-based information, you’re able to:

- Uncover relationships between stores, products and customer types that affect sales performance

- Identify marketplace gaps, opportunities, threats and level of market penetration or saturation (by adding in an element of time, it is also possible to track and predict growth and changes in customer preferences, behavior and demography per region)

- Assess the sales of particular items by store and region to underpin future planning, determine effective and efficient sales campaigns and stock distribution strategies

- Track stock levels of individual retail operators to help coordinate warehouse deliveries to ensure individual shop fronts are always well stocked

- Assess customer purchase habits, frequency and residency to help new marketing campaigns boost store traffic and sales

a) Segment customers in a multi-dimensional way via purchase history, demography as well as location, to develop highly effective and personalized relationships
b) Identify the location of customers, as well as potential customers, and target them with specialized marketing messages via location-specific mediums
c) Analyze location-based marketing metrics to develop lucrative and sustainable customer loyalty programs

- Maximize market share and individual store performance

a) Detect and mitigate unnecessary competition between company stores
b) Forecast and redevelop store-specific budgets and expectations based on the size of surrounding populations and other location specific information

- Select site locations for new outlets or warehouses based on the geographic spread of your most profitable customers, proximity of competing stores, public transport and general transport routes, and how the local populous compares to your ideal customer profile

- Detect and categorize underperforming stores to assess their ongoing viability, ability to raise profits, and develop strategies for rectifying the situation

Where to next?

As a retailer, LI offers you the ability to discover fresh insights and new relationships within and between your most important information – your sales, marketing, operations, CRM, finance, HR and procurement data – and to analyze and compare crucial business dimensions such as product, region, store, customer, department, supply chain, risk management; and of course, location.

Merging your location-based and traditional BI information provides context to your business data and enables you to see new opportunities.

So register for our Webinar event – Location Intelligence Best Practices – and learn how to harness advanced mapping capabilities to advantage your organization by effectively aligning business development and strategy.

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Let Yellowfin show you how to remove investment risk and outline strategies that allow you to continue to grow with confidence. Let Yellowfin show you how LI can increase your profits and assist you to realize sustained competitive advantage.