Intelligent Economy

Geographic intelligence is an increasingly important element in today's strategic plans, supply chain operations and consumer products. The popularity of programs such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, which employ satellite imagery and aerial photography to generate spatial information, is reflective of this trend.

Indeed, geographic intelligence is becoming easier to use and vendors are starting to incorporate it into their enterprise software solutions, explains Joe Francica in Intelligent Enterprise. "As a result, C-level executives are asking about ways in which they can integrate their corporate data with location technology and get a bird's-eye view that may provide a better understanding of customer locations, as well as proximity to other geographically important features — such as competitors."

Expect greater corporate investment as the benefits become more clear. "Corporations that need to leverage location-based information can now more efficiently expose geographic relationships to a broader group of business process managers and executives, who never knew they were missing key information," the author writes. "From customer relationship management to enterprise resource planning, maps complete the dashboards so familiar to many decision support tools."

One company now focused on "geographic enablement" in business intelligence is Oracle. Indeed, it now "delivers its database with the ability to manage, store and query geospatial data. The company offers enterprise database users a way to manipulate data with a location attribution and take advantage of the product's inherent security and indexing features. Oracle Locator provides support for simple feature management, map projections and visualization, while Oracle Spatial delivers geocoding, routing and spatial analysis."

BI providers such as Hyperion Solutions, Information Builders Inc., MicroStrategy and SAS Institute are working with geo-intelligence software specialists like ESRI, MapInfo and others to "integrate location technology with their platforms." Atlanta-based Cox Communications has deployed a solution jointly developed by MapInfo and MicroStrategy solution to analyze markets and support field sales activities.

This may change the way we think about geography. As companies and consumers increasingly identify the value of being location-aware, our demand for geo-intelligence can only be expected to grow.