Editorial: Becoming New Again
By: Hal Reid
| (Nov 01, 2006) |
Last week I attended a Webinar titled "Improving
Business Decisions through Location Intelligence" which was presented
by BusinessWeek Research Services and MapInfo. Presenters
included Kevin Hopkins, analyst and writer for BusinessWeek and
an expert on location intelligence; Tara Pottebaum, a consultant from
the Yankee Group, who focuses on integration technologies and business
intelligence; Mark LaRow, vice president of products at Microstrategy;
and Richard Celio, vice president of franchise business development for
IHOP, who recently installed MapInfo
I couldn't help but notice the gushing undertone about "this great new
stuff" that pervaded the presentation. There was a fresher and stronger
type of enthusiasm for location intelligence technology than I usually
find in these types of presentations. Also, some of the panelists were
particularly excited about stuff that many of us take for granted,
because we've been around it for 25 or more years - drivetimes, network
optimization, trade area assessments and site evaluation. There was
even the classic unattributed saw: Did you know that "80% of enterprise
data contains a spatial element?!"
I think the enthusiasm was refreshing because it was coming from people
who are somewhat new to the capabilities of location technology for
business applications. Sometimes these Webinars tend to be, shall we
say, a knowledge reinforcement exercise by a group of professionals
from within the IT industry.
Richard Celio had recently acquired a comprehensive MapInfo solution.
He was very enthusiastic about the fact that IHOP is doing a much
better job of trade area, market and site evaluation, especially now
that it is doing a lot of franchise development. He reminded me how
useful LI is and how pumped up people can be when it is working for
them.
It's got to be a lot of fun for vendors to get to demonstrate how this
technology can not only make you more money and reduce your risk, but
also how clearly you can understand the dynamic world of facility
placement, whom your customer really is, and how well you are doing in
any given market.
So it seems as if some things that we thought were old are actually new
again! I recently read this
article in Franchise Update by Jeffrey
Davis, president of IntelleVue,
which explains LI technology to a new
audience. The article explains the scope of LI to franchisers and
expresses this same new enthusiasm that I heard during the Webinar.
This sense of newness and freshness … where is it coming from? We have
been doing this stuff for at least 25 years. Isn't this a mature
technology?
As I thought more about it, I realized that there were three elements
that might contribute to this new enthusiasm: improved technology,
improved people and broader scope. I'll spend just a few sentences on
each.
Perhaps the most important factor is that the technology has come a
long way. No longer are LI installations the science projects of 25
years ago, with wobbly platforms, semi-CAD software and data that were
pretty general. Almost everything works today and the "slightly better
than average bear" can make it go. Data that we could have only dreamed
about back in the day are now available; computers and output
capabilities have developed immeasurably.
The second element is the new crop of people who are the candidates for
using LI tools. In the late '90s, CoreNET Global
realized that there
weren't new people coming into the world of retail development.
Everybody who was an existing player in network expansion/management
was middle-aged, and they were being forced out as more companies cut
back on expansion. These people were either finding new vocations or,
if possible, retiring.
But now we're back in a period of expansion, and primarily with many
new individuals running the show. These new knowledge workers are just
now acquiring the expertise in retail network management and perhaps
have a better understanding of the entire enterprise. Renewed expansion
+ new people = new excitement about what LI tools can do.
The third element is that the scope of the tools is broader. Within
site selection and trade area assessment applications, the tools now
include business and competitive intelligence as well that can reach
further into the enterprise. This is, of course, partly a function of
better software, better data and the improved ways we access and
utilize both.
A factoid that was mentioned during the Webinar was that only 6.6% of
companies had invested in LI. If true, this is an amazingly low number.
Regardless of the percentage, however, it is exciting to think that we
still have a lot of people to whom the LI tech story must be told.
If LI technology is expanding and there are new opportunities, the
excitement and newness should, I hope, re-propagate through the
industry. It isn't often you get to retell stories to new audiences
(I'm told that you get to do that with grandchildren). We also have
lamented that we never could seem to get LI into the mainstream. Yet it
doesn't get much more mainstream than BusinessWeek. Kudos to
BusinessWeek and MapInfo for pointing out that we still have a
lot more
people to enlighten, and that enthusiasm and newness for LI still
exists and is growing. Down here in the trenches, it's good to hear it!
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