Wherever You Go, There You Are
Most of the world is familiar with geolocation data from GPS - the feature that’s built in to our phones or other devices that allows applications to show us where we are on a map, or how to get to someplace else on a map. The GPS satellites that surround Earth keep us going the right places at all times by triangulating our position on the coordinate grid that we’ve invisibly laid across the planet.
As time passes, we are increasingly able to do more with geolocation data. If your organization isn’t yet taking advantage of it, then it may be time to consider the ways in which it could benefit you.
If you have a mobile app, you may be able to request permissions from your app users to know their location even when your app isn’t open on their mobile device; you can then detect when they’re approaching one of your stores and send them an alert reminding them of items that they probably need to purchase from you.
In-store positioning systems are also increasingly present; with these you can track individuals within your establishment down to a much finer level of precision than previously possible. Can you help guide users to products they’re having trouble finding? Can you push coupon notifications as they enter specific aisles?
Perhaps you can take the traversal data in aggregate and understand how your shoppers travel through your store, from when they enter until they exit. Where do people spend the most time? The least? Which areas of the store appear to be the most bottlenecked?
And, of course, geolocation data can be used on websites, mobile apps and so on to help direct users to the closest location your business offers - making it simpler and more efficient for your customers to find and interact with you.
But geolocation data isn’t just about where your car is at or whether you need to make a left turn or a right turn ahead. Data-as-a-service offerings exist today that allow us to tie events to locations around the world. Earthquakes, flooding, snowstorms, tornados - as well as non-natural events such as big football games, inaugurations, as so on. We can use geolocation tagging here to understand which of our business’s locations might be impacted by events, for preparing adequate staffing levels or ordering sufficient inventory. We can analyze consumption trends while including as features information about events that have occurred, are occurring or will occur.
Of course, like any other data, geographic data requires attention for cleaning and standardization purposes - otherwise you may have customer sailing to the coast of Africa to try to reach you. But in general, leveraging location data as part of your business’s overall data strategy is a smart - probably critical - move in the right direction.