Description
Over the past decade, geographic information systems (GIS) have become increasingly important as a supporting and enabling technology within the business environment and especially within the sphere of business intelligence (BI).
Application
technical
PositionIT - May/June 2008 71
S
outh Africa at first lagged behind
this international trend with only
a small percentage of companies
that operate in industries other than
resources, transport/logistics and
communication using GIS to enhance
their information technologies.
There are many reasons for this
lag, notably the perceived cost
and complexity of GIS, shortage of
individuals skilled in both business
IT and GIS, historical lack of spatial
data and issues of data standards and
software interoperability.
GIS as a tool in business
intelligence
by Rudi Posthumus, Standard Bank
Over the past decade, geographic information systems (GIS) have become increasingly important as a
supporting and enabling technology within the business environment and especially within the sphere of
business intelligence (BI).
This is slowly starting to change as GIS
technology and industry in South Africa
matures. More and more companies,
notably in the financial services and
insurance industries have started
to implement GIS in an attempt to
get a better handle on the complex
and dynamic business environment
characteristic of our country. Today
there is a greater choice of scalable
GIS products and commercial spatial
data sets. Business managers have
become more comfortable with GIS
technology as a result of widespread
use of GPS for business and leisure and
the introduction of map-enabled web
resources such as Google Earth.
Location is a critical component in
almost every business transaction.
Although a lot of data have a location
dimension, whether it be customers,
stores, warehouses or other assets,
this information is rarely exploited in
traditional BI analysis. To gain maximum
value from the ever-increasing volumes
of data, companies need to make
use of the location element to gain
deeper business insight in order to
improve competitiveness and business
Fig. 1: Geographic total view of business.
technical
Application
72 PositionIT - May/June 2008
performance. The BI industry has
recognised the potential synergies
between their own and GIS technology
and this has seen new versions of BI
systems such as Business Objects and
SAS designed to take advantage of GIS
technologies like ESRI’s ArcGIS.
GIS and BI: converging
technologies
The business environment is becoming
more complicated through the effects
of globalisation, growing customer
education and sophistication and
increasing competition. South Africa as
an emerging economy is no exception.
In our country we see a rapidly
changing economic landscape with
international players entering the arena
and dramatic changes in the income
and lifestyle profiles of our population.
To stay competitive companies invest
in information technology, business
operations become more automated
and measuring technologies more
sophisticated. The net result of this is
that companies often acquire massive
amounts of internal data relating
to customers, business operations
and financial performance. This data
overload presents a challenge to the
BI professional who is required to store,
locate and analyse data and present
meaningful information to decision
makers.
The term “business intelligence” refers to
technologies, applications and processes
for gathering, storing, analysing and
providing access to data. The aim of
BI is to help enterprise users make
better decisions. BI is the combination
of processes, business rules and
technologies that take raw data, organise
it into meaningful and actionable
information, while ensuring that it
reaches the right people at the right time
to support business decisions.
BI unlocks the value held in the
business’s disparate data depositories by
turning it into knowledge and insights,
and delivering it to whoever needs it,
when they need it, where they need it,
and in the format they need it in. BI
applications include the activities of:
• Decisions support systems
• Query and reporting
• Online analytical processing
Fig. 2: Dashboard provincial level overview of branch network performance.
• Statistical analysis
• Forecasting
• Data mining
BI applications can be:
• Mission critical and integrated into a
company’s business operations, or
• Occasional to meet a specific
requirement or answer a specific
question, or
• Enterprise wide or limited to one
business unit or project.
Any good research and information
usually generates more questions than it
answers. Therefore BI in a company is a
journey that never ends. As BI systems
become more sophisticated they put
more of the business puzzle’s pieces in
place than decision makers have ever
seen before. This raises the level of
thinking about problems and inevitably
leads to more questions being raised.
All business operations happen
somewhere in geographic space, clients
have physical addresses and branches
are placed to service specific trade areas.
BI officers in many companies recognise
GIS technology’s ability to integrate data
from different business units and source
technical
Application
PositionIT - May/June 2008 73
systems by using this location element
as a common denominator. Perhaps
even more important, GIS also provides
significant advantages in spatial
analysis capability and visualisation
of information to show patterns and
trends.
The advantage of integrating GIS
into BI
While GIS and BI have traditionally
addressed different needs, these
technologies have now converged,
enabling business analysts to
extend their view of the enterprise
by integrating geospatial data
with business information. At the
same time, the growing consumer
experience of mapping information
is driving business awareness of
location exploitation for commercial
purposes. Consequently, merging GIS
and BI technology produces results
that extend beyond simply visually
representing data on a map.
Combining the analytical power
of databases with the geographic
capabilities of maps, it allows
business users to explore and analyse
relationships between geographic data
and business data. While BI tools
are ideal for analysing who, what
and when (customer, product, time),
this analysis falls short of answering
questions in relation to where, such
as the relationship between where
customers live and where they make
their purchases.
Bridging the data gap to provide a
total view of business
Businesses operate within an
internal and external environment.
Understanding the bigger picture
of what the internal and external
environment look like and how they
relate to each other is critical to
make correct strategic and tactical
decisions.
Management information systems (MIS)
and data warehouses are designed to
acquire, store and distribute internal
data to decision makers within the
company. When these systems work,
they can provide valuable insights
allowing the company to maximise
revenue from existing sources and
improve operational efficiency to reduce
costs. In reality the business units of
many large companies operate in silos
where internal data vary considerably
in format, nature and volume.
Even with MIS and BI systems
in place, data exchange between
silos may be inefficient, leading to
managers having an incomplete
understanding of the company’s
internal environment. GIS can assist
in bridging the gap between silos by
utilising the common denominator
of location to tie together data of
varying types from different source
systems thereby speeding up the
process of finding, filtering and
comparing data to find answers.
Understanding the external
environment presents a bigger
challenge. The external environment
is the arena where potential new
clients and opportunities exist and
where competitors pose a threat.
Many companies find it difficult to
locate and integrate data on the
external environment into their existing
information systems which is usually
designed to report structured internal
data. This makes it difficult to build
up a comprehensive “total view of
business” and gain a real competitive
advantage.
GIS is pivotal in bridging the gap
between internal and external data
assets. Vector and raster topographical
maps, aerial photographs, census and
other demographic data and even
satellite imagery can become extremely
valuable business information if analysed
together with internal data in a common
framework.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Business managers are under pressure to
achieve more with fewer resources. They
also have to assimilate growing volumes
of information pertaining to increasingly
complex business problems. Reporting
is a mainstay of BI with “dashboards”
currently gaining in popularity against
management reports. The dashboard is a
familiar graphic tool for business users to
access key performance indicators, and
can be used to better understand what
has happened, when and why.
Enhancing these dashboards with
mapping visualisation also offers
businesses the opportunity to bring
spatial analysis to a wider audience,
moving from it being a tool for the
GIS and BI specialists only, to a true
tool for all business users. No other
reporting format can match a map’s
ability to condense information and
compare multiple variables of a problem.
GIS is particularly suited to enhance
management reports and “dashboards”
with intuitive maps and graphics that
take less time to evaluate and are easier
to understand.
Getting answers fast
In the fast paced business world, the
company who gets the answer to a
problem first can sometimes gain a
significant advantage over competitors.
Information therefore only has value in
the business environment if it reaches
the right decision maker, at the right
time and in an easily understood
technical
Application
74 PositionIT - May/June 2008
format. GIS has the ability to help BI
professionals locate more data and
information faster by tying many internal
and external data “pipes” together
through location. In effect the GIS
enhanced BI system becomes a true
“one stop information shop”
Improving data quality and credibility
Due to the vast amounts of data
stored by companies on almost every
conceivable aspect of their business
operations, it is maybe inevitable
that errors sometimes occur which
degrades the usefulness and credibility
of information. With many data types
such as large client databases some of
these errors may be difficult or even
impossible to detect in tabular database
formats. Often it is only when this data
is pulled into a GIS through a process
like geocoding and mapped or spatially
analysed that some of these errors can
be detected.
Business areas where GIS can
add value
Some GIS applications in business
are readily apparent and well known.
Examples include vehicle tracking and
fleet management combining GIS with
GPS technology. Location analysis for
retail outlets have also utilised GIS with
great success. There is however almost
no area in modern business that cannot
benefit from GIS integrated into BI with
new applications being identified almost
every day. Some of the business areas
where GIS have proved immensely
useful include:
• Retail trade area demarcation
for traditional location analysis,
customer segmentation and
profiling, targeted marketing,
branch merchandising etc.
• Target audience sampling in
market research.
• Credit and geographic risk
management.
• Market share estimation and
resultant calculation of internal
and external market potential to
inform sales targets and estimate
up and cross-sell opportunities to
existing clients.
• Route optimisation, logistics and
fleet management.
• Network planning optimisation for
companies with branch networks.
• Physical asset tracking and
management.
• Competitor analysis and threat
assessment.
• Identifying areas of residential and
retail growth and new business
opportunities.
Using GIS at South African banks
South African Banks have used GIS
for many years as a tool to inform
business decisions. Traditionally, the
use of GIS was restricted to network
planning (placement of new ATMs and
branches) within the domain of the
distribution planning function. Over the
last five years however spatial data
and analysis have found a much wider
audience across the spectrum of bank
business units. As awareness of the
technology grows the banks are finding
more and more applications where
GIS can add value by integrating the
spatial component of information.
GIS have already played an important
role in informing decisions regarding:
Financial Sector Charter – GIS
technology has been invaluable in
measuring and improving bank branch
and ATM coverage in previously
unserviced areas such as the former
homelands and deep-rural South Africa.
Segment and product development
teams – To understand the changes
taking place in South Africa’s complex
demographic profile by area and over
time, and to adapt existing or adopt
new products to meet clients' needs
and expectations. The technology
is also very important in enabling
realistic sales target allocation by
product and branch.
Home loans and credit – As credit is
extended to an ever larger proportion
of the South African population it
becomes important to track new
developments in the residential
market, determine market share of
lending products and identify priority
and problem areas.
Operations – The banks have large
branch and ATM networks requiring
considerable logistic support ranging
from cash services to IT systems. GIS
are very useful when needing to find
answers for many logistics questions
ranging from optimising of ATM
servicing routes to managing courier
and transportation costs.
Branch network – Branch and regional
managers consume large amounts
of information pertaining to the
existing client base and residential,
retail and industrial growth within their
branch trade areas. This helps them to
identify new growth opportunities and
understand internal and external market
potential to achieve sales targets.
Conclusion
You are a business manager asked
to evaluate the merits of upgrading
one of your company’s branches at a
considerable cost. Imagine being able
to within seconds locate the branch on
a digital map and your GIS enabled BI
system allowing you to understand for
instance:
• Staff productivity, sales and
profitability of the branch as
measured against a national or
regional benchmark and possibly
including a timeline comparison.
• Competitor branch networks within
the trade or service area.
• Internal (up and cross-sell
opportunities to existing clients)
and external (difference between
actual and required market share)
potential of clients within the
trade area.
• Client distribution within the trade
area and their movement patterns
from place of residence to point of
sale.
• Client language, income and
lifestyle profiles to assist
with targeted marketing and
merchandising.
• Logistics challenges, drive times
and delivery routes pertinent to
your branch.
To many business decision makers,
having such a wealth of internal and
external information available at short
notice and within a single frame for
analysis seems an almost impossible
dream. It is however a fact that GIS
enhanced BI can and has made this
dream a reality for many companies.
Imagine the possibilities.
References
[1] The Location Intelligent Enterprise:
Enhancing Business Intelligence with
Location, Louella Fernandes, October
2007.
[2] GIS and Business Intelligence: The
Geographic Advantage, ESRI White
Paper, September 2006
Contact Rudi Posthumus, Standard
Bank, Tel 011 631-2915,
[email protected]
doc_780896662.pdf
Over the past decade, geographic information systems (GIS) have become increasingly important as a supporting and enabling technology within the business environment and especially within the sphere of business intelligence (BI).
Application
technical
PositionIT - May/June 2008 71
S
outh Africa at first lagged behind
this international trend with only
a small percentage of companies
that operate in industries other than
resources, transport/logistics and
communication using GIS to enhance
their information technologies.
There are many reasons for this
lag, notably the perceived cost
and complexity of GIS, shortage of
individuals skilled in both business
IT and GIS, historical lack of spatial
data and issues of data standards and
software interoperability.
GIS as a tool in business
intelligence
by Rudi Posthumus, Standard Bank
Over the past decade, geographic information systems (GIS) have become increasingly important as a
supporting and enabling technology within the business environment and especially within the sphere of
business intelligence (BI).
This is slowly starting to change as GIS
technology and industry in South Africa
matures. More and more companies,
notably in the financial services and
insurance industries have started
to implement GIS in an attempt to
get a better handle on the complex
and dynamic business environment
characteristic of our country. Today
there is a greater choice of scalable
GIS products and commercial spatial
data sets. Business managers have
become more comfortable with GIS
technology as a result of widespread
use of GPS for business and leisure and
the introduction of map-enabled web
resources such as Google Earth.
Location is a critical component in
almost every business transaction.
Although a lot of data have a location
dimension, whether it be customers,
stores, warehouses or other assets,
this information is rarely exploited in
traditional BI analysis. To gain maximum
value from the ever-increasing volumes
of data, companies need to make
use of the location element to gain
deeper business insight in order to
improve competitiveness and business
Fig. 1: Geographic total view of business.
technical
Application
72 PositionIT - May/June 2008
performance. The BI industry has
recognised the potential synergies
between their own and GIS technology
and this has seen new versions of BI
systems such as Business Objects and
SAS designed to take advantage of GIS
technologies like ESRI’s ArcGIS.
GIS and BI: converging
technologies
The business environment is becoming
more complicated through the effects
of globalisation, growing customer
education and sophistication and
increasing competition. South Africa as
an emerging economy is no exception.
In our country we see a rapidly
changing economic landscape with
international players entering the arena
and dramatic changes in the income
and lifestyle profiles of our population.
To stay competitive companies invest
in information technology, business
operations become more automated
and measuring technologies more
sophisticated. The net result of this is
that companies often acquire massive
amounts of internal data relating
to customers, business operations
and financial performance. This data
overload presents a challenge to the
BI professional who is required to store,
locate and analyse data and present
meaningful information to decision
makers.
The term “business intelligence” refers to
technologies, applications and processes
for gathering, storing, analysing and
providing access to data. The aim of
BI is to help enterprise users make
better decisions. BI is the combination
of processes, business rules and
technologies that take raw data, organise
it into meaningful and actionable
information, while ensuring that it
reaches the right people at the right time
to support business decisions.
BI unlocks the value held in the
business’s disparate data depositories by
turning it into knowledge and insights,
and delivering it to whoever needs it,
when they need it, where they need it,
and in the format they need it in. BI
applications include the activities of:
• Decisions support systems
• Query and reporting
• Online analytical processing
Fig. 2: Dashboard provincial level overview of branch network performance.
• Statistical analysis
• Forecasting
• Data mining
BI applications can be:
• Mission critical and integrated into a
company’s business operations, or
• Occasional to meet a specific
requirement or answer a specific
question, or
• Enterprise wide or limited to one
business unit or project.
Any good research and information
usually generates more questions than it
answers. Therefore BI in a company is a
journey that never ends. As BI systems
become more sophisticated they put
more of the business puzzle’s pieces in
place than decision makers have ever
seen before. This raises the level of
thinking about problems and inevitably
leads to more questions being raised.
All business operations happen
somewhere in geographic space, clients
have physical addresses and branches
are placed to service specific trade areas.
BI officers in many companies recognise
GIS technology’s ability to integrate data
from different business units and source
technical
Application
PositionIT - May/June 2008 73
systems by using this location element
as a common denominator. Perhaps
even more important, GIS also provides
significant advantages in spatial
analysis capability and visualisation
of information to show patterns and
trends.
The advantage of integrating GIS
into BI
While GIS and BI have traditionally
addressed different needs, these
technologies have now converged,
enabling business analysts to
extend their view of the enterprise
by integrating geospatial data
with business information. At the
same time, the growing consumer
experience of mapping information
is driving business awareness of
location exploitation for commercial
purposes. Consequently, merging GIS
and BI technology produces results
that extend beyond simply visually
representing data on a map.
Combining the analytical power
of databases with the geographic
capabilities of maps, it allows
business users to explore and analyse
relationships between geographic data
and business data. While BI tools
are ideal for analysing who, what
and when (customer, product, time),
this analysis falls short of answering
questions in relation to where, such
as the relationship between where
customers live and where they make
their purchases.
Bridging the data gap to provide a
total view of business
Businesses operate within an
internal and external environment.
Understanding the bigger picture
of what the internal and external
environment look like and how they
relate to each other is critical to
make correct strategic and tactical
decisions.
Management information systems (MIS)
and data warehouses are designed to
acquire, store and distribute internal
data to decision makers within the
company. When these systems work,
they can provide valuable insights
allowing the company to maximise
revenue from existing sources and
improve operational efficiency to reduce
costs. In reality the business units of
many large companies operate in silos
where internal data vary considerably
in format, nature and volume.
Even with MIS and BI systems
in place, data exchange between
silos may be inefficient, leading to
managers having an incomplete
understanding of the company’s
internal environment. GIS can assist
in bridging the gap between silos by
utilising the common denominator
of location to tie together data of
varying types from different source
systems thereby speeding up the
process of finding, filtering and
comparing data to find answers.
Understanding the external
environment presents a bigger
challenge. The external environment
is the arena where potential new
clients and opportunities exist and
where competitors pose a threat.
Many companies find it difficult to
locate and integrate data on the
external environment into their existing
information systems which is usually
designed to report structured internal
data. This makes it difficult to build
up a comprehensive “total view of
business” and gain a real competitive
advantage.
GIS is pivotal in bridging the gap
between internal and external data
assets. Vector and raster topographical
maps, aerial photographs, census and
other demographic data and even
satellite imagery can become extremely
valuable business information if analysed
together with internal data in a common
framework.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Business managers are under pressure to
achieve more with fewer resources. They
also have to assimilate growing volumes
of information pertaining to increasingly
complex business problems. Reporting
is a mainstay of BI with “dashboards”
currently gaining in popularity against
management reports. The dashboard is a
familiar graphic tool for business users to
access key performance indicators, and
can be used to better understand what
has happened, when and why.
Enhancing these dashboards with
mapping visualisation also offers
businesses the opportunity to bring
spatial analysis to a wider audience,
moving from it being a tool for the
GIS and BI specialists only, to a true
tool for all business users. No other
reporting format can match a map’s
ability to condense information and
compare multiple variables of a problem.
GIS is particularly suited to enhance
management reports and “dashboards”
with intuitive maps and graphics that
take less time to evaluate and are easier
to understand.
Getting answers fast
In the fast paced business world, the
company who gets the answer to a
problem first can sometimes gain a
significant advantage over competitors.
Information therefore only has value in
the business environment if it reaches
the right decision maker, at the right
time and in an easily understood
technical
Application
74 PositionIT - May/June 2008
format. GIS has the ability to help BI
professionals locate more data and
information faster by tying many internal
and external data “pipes” together
through location. In effect the GIS
enhanced BI system becomes a true
“one stop information shop”
Improving data quality and credibility
Due to the vast amounts of data
stored by companies on almost every
conceivable aspect of their business
operations, it is maybe inevitable
that errors sometimes occur which
degrades the usefulness and credibility
of information. With many data types
such as large client databases some of
these errors may be difficult or even
impossible to detect in tabular database
formats. Often it is only when this data
is pulled into a GIS through a process
like geocoding and mapped or spatially
analysed that some of these errors can
be detected.
Business areas where GIS can
add value
Some GIS applications in business
are readily apparent and well known.
Examples include vehicle tracking and
fleet management combining GIS with
GPS technology. Location analysis for
retail outlets have also utilised GIS with
great success. There is however almost
no area in modern business that cannot
benefit from GIS integrated into BI with
new applications being identified almost
every day. Some of the business areas
where GIS have proved immensely
useful include:
• Retail trade area demarcation
for traditional location analysis,
customer segmentation and
profiling, targeted marketing,
branch merchandising etc.
• Target audience sampling in
market research.
• Credit and geographic risk
management.
• Market share estimation and
resultant calculation of internal
and external market potential to
inform sales targets and estimate
up and cross-sell opportunities to
existing clients.
• Route optimisation, logistics and
fleet management.
• Network planning optimisation for
companies with branch networks.
• Physical asset tracking and
management.
• Competitor analysis and threat
assessment.
• Identifying areas of residential and
retail growth and new business
opportunities.
Using GIS at South African banks
South African Banks have used GIS
for many years as a tool to inform
business decisions. Traditionally, the
use of GIS was restricted to network
planning (placement of new ATMs and
branches) within the domain of the
distribution planning function. Over the
last five years however spatial data
and analysis have found a much wider
audience across the spectrum of bank
business units. As awareness of the
technology grows the banks are finding
more and more applications where
GIS can add value by integrating the
spatial component of information.
GIS have already played an important
role in informing decisions regarding:
Financial Sector Charter – GIS
technology has been invaluable in
measuring and improving bank branch
and ATM coverage in previously
unserviced areas such as the former
homelands and deep-rural South Africa.
Segment and product development
teams – To understand the changes
taking place in South Africa’s complex
demographic profile by area and over
time, and to adapt existing or adopt
new products to meet clients' needs
and expectations. The technology
is also very important in enabling
realistic sales target allocation by
product and branch.
Home loans and credit – As credit is
extended to an ever larger proportion
of the South African population it
becomes important to track new
developments in the residential
market, determine market share of
lending products and identify priority
and problem areas.
Operations – The banks have large
branch and ATM networks requiring
considerable logistic support ranging
from cash services to IT systems. GIS
are very useful when needing to find
answers for many logistics questions
ranging from optimising of ATM
servicing routes to managing courier
and transportation costs.
Branch network – Branch and regional
managers consume large amounts
of information pertaining to the
existing client base and residential,
retail and industrial growth within their
branch trade areas. This helps them to
identify new growth opportunities and
understand internal and external market
potential to achieve sales targets.
Conclusion
You are a business manager asked
to evaluate the merits of upgrading
one of your company’s branches at a
considerable cost. Imagine being able
to within seconds locate the branch on
a digital map and your GIS enabled BI
system allowing you to understand for
instance:
• Staff productivity, sales and
profitability of the branch as
measured against a national or
regional benchmark and possibly
including a timeline comparison.
• Competitor branch networks within
the trade or service area.
• Internal (up and cross-sell
opportunities to existing clients)
and external (difference between
actual and required market share)
potential of clients within the
trade area.
• Client distribution within the trade
area and their movement patterns
from place of residence to point of
sale.
• Client language, income and
lifestyle profiles to assist
with targeted marketing and
merchandising.
• Logistics challenges, drive times
and delivery routes pertinent to
your branch.
To many business decision makers,
having such a wealth of internal and
external information available at short
notice and within a single frame for
analysis seems an almost impossible
dream. It is however a fact that GIS
enhanced BI can and has made this
dream a reality for many companies.
Imagine the possibilities.
References
[1] The Location Intelligent Enterprise:
Enhancing Business Intelligence with
Location, Louella Fernandes, October
2007.
[2] GIS and Business Intelligence: The
Geographic Advantage, ESRI White
Paper, September 2006
Contact Rudi Posthumus, Standard
Bank, Tel 011 631-2915,
[email protected]
doc_780896662.pdf