What is Location Intelligence?

Location intelligence is the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting data about a specific location. This can include the location itself among other factors that impact a given business' performance. 

For example, when running a marketing campaign, it's important to consider consumer habits in targeted locales to optimize advertising performance. Location intelligence helps businesses make better decisions by providing them with valuable information about their customers' preferences and competitors' movements.

What is location intelligence?

Location intelligence is the use of location-based data to improve business performance. It is a subset of business intelligence and business analytics, but it has some unique characteristics that distinguish it in the field of data-driven optimization.

Location Intelligence can take many different forms across sectors:

• Retail — How do I improve sales? Where should I open a new store?
• Delivery — Are my routes optimal? How can I reduce delivery costs while meeting demand?
• Advertising — What do consumers in this area care about? How might I best reach people in this neighborhood?

How is location intelligence different from business intelligence?

Location intelligence and business intelligence are two terms that are often used interchangeably, but their definitions are distinct.

Business intelligence generally refers to the use of data to make business decisions. This can be in areas such as sales, marketing, or operations. It is often used by organizations to gain a competitive advantage by analyzing market trends, consumer behavior, and other aspects of their business environment.

Location intelligence is a specific type of business intelligence that refers to using geospatial data to help businesses make decisions about where to locate themselves, how to conduct physical movements, or how different areas affect consumer habits. This can include choosing which locations will be most profitable based on demographic information, as well as understanding how local weather patterns might affect revenue during certain times of the year.

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Why is location intelligence important?

Location intelligence is a vital set of data that helps businesses better understand their customers. Location data can be collected in real-time, which allows companies to make spatial decisions with greater accuracy and immediacy. Quick responses to consumer trends can increase customer happiness and lead to better business performance.

Location intelligence helps businesses with customer relationship management (CRM). It provides insight into consumer behavior, preferences and buying habits through location-based insights that are relevant to their business models. The data can even help retailers improve indoor operations by providing analysis of foot traffic patterns inside the store or on the premises of a shopping mall.

How do businesses use location intelligence?

Location intelligence allows businesses to add a spatial element to their operational strategy. It helps them target marketing, tailor services, and fine-tune other operations, providing the competitive edge that can help businesses get ahead of their peers.

Any business that relies on physical assets within a specific region should consider using location intelligence solutions or services to optimize those assets. For example, retailers use this type of information to determine where they should open new stores or locate inventory. Energy companies use it as part of their operations planning. Real estate brokers use it in market analysis reports. The applications are vast and can make waves in any industry.

What types of data are used for location intelligence?

Location data comes from sources like GPS, cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and Bluetooth beacons. These and other location-based data points (LBDs) emitted by the devices around us allow businesses to connect physical locations to consumer habits like travel, spending, and media consumption.

LBDs (also known as "proximity marketing technologies") provide valuable insights for businesses that operate in specific locales. For example, if a business notices that people in a certain area eat lunch at the same time every day, this may indicate that the business should offer a lunch special at that location to capitalize on sales.

Learn how location data is the ultimate growth hack with the following sources:

1. Movement data - Live updates of where people move most.
2. Forward geocoding - Converting written location data into points on a map.
3. Reverse geocoding - Transforming geographic coordinates into named places.
4. Matrix API - Calculate the distance and travel time between multiple locations in any order.
5. Isochrone API - Identify locations reachable within a specific geographic area and travel time.

Achieve data-driven success with location intelligence

Location intelligence is the new frontier of business analytics. It can help your business make better decisions, reach your customers with the right message at the right time, and enable quick action on new opportunities. Location intelligence combines data from multiple sources to provide insights into consumer behavior that would otherwise be unavailable. 

Whether you’re looking to improve consumer engagement or increase revenue by targeting specific demographics in certain locations, location intelligence will help you see what works best for your business goals. Enter a new era of business optimization with Mapbox.