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By Gary Allemann, Managing Director at Master Data Management

Knowing where your customers – or potential customers – live, work and shop is important. However, customer intelligence revolves around so much more than simply location. To truly understand a location and the customers that may or may not pass through it, it is essential to have a more contextual understanding. Enriching existing location data with other related data sets is vital to achieving greater customer intelligence.

Location is still important

Understanding your market better can be a key differentiator, and geocoding to understand their location is an important part of this. However, the real value of location data can only be unlocked through location intelligence, which requires that the location data be augmented and enriched with other data. Intelligence also implies that the data must be analysed to deliver some form of insight that will ultimately improve decision-making and the customer experience.

The end goal of location intelligence is to leverage the location of customers, products and services for better planning, to enhance the customer experience and to maximise revenue. We need to be able to serve customers where they are because bringing products and services to them typically results in a higher rate of sale in the general market than expecting customers to actively seek products and services out.

Enriching the data to deliver context

To better understand the customer, we need to know not only where they live, work and shop, but also deeper demographic insight, to help us understand how they shop and what they value. This will inform what they are likely to buy. It is also vital to understand the environment around a location, similar businesses that may exist, travel times and traffic patterns in an area, the accessibility of a certain spot and more.

The insight you gain from enriched and contextual location data can be a game-changer. For example, a specific location may have no petrol stations within a given radius, which may make it seem like the ideal location for a new one. However, a more contextual understanding of the location may reveal that the majority of the local population use public transport, which would make it less than an ideal position.

Another location, which on paper may seem like a poor choice given its proximity to another similar business, may be a better option. It may be more accessible than the other petrol station or on the other side of a double-lane road that cannot easily be crossed. There may be sufficient customers in the area to justify a second petrol station. Without context around geo-codes and pure location data, these insights will not be revealed.

Value in the data

Access to clean and accurate data is a priority for analysis, insight and faster time-to-value. However, the process of sourcing, cleansing and managing data is tedious, time-consuming and costly for most organizations.

Trusted external datasets  offer an opportunity to simplify data sourcing and enrich existing location data sets. Consider options that allow you to make informed decisions by testing both the quality of the data set on offer, and the ease of integration with your existing systems and business processes.

The value of data as always lies in the ability to deliver analysis and insight to forecast trends, identify opportunities and threats, and react in a more agile manner to market changes. Pulling in data from other sources to enrich the analysis of pure location can unlock business insight that would otherwise not be available, and location intelligence as the source of customer intelligence can drive a new source of competitive advantage.