Location leverage: improving operational efficiency and profit margins with geospatial data

In a recent study conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 95% of executives said mapping and geospatial data are important to achieving desired business results.

“If you had asked six to seven years ago, I would have said geospatial data is a nice to have,” said one, “but now it’s a must-have.”

Of course, this comes as no surprise to us: Fulcrum has been helping organizations leverage location-based data to make more informed decisions for the last decade, and have seen the impact it’s had on their businesses. For example:

• A 6,000% increase in completed inspections
• Increased daily inspections by 33% (with one less employee)
• 30% fewer hours spent on management and QA of field data

Today, with the rapid pace of innovation in cloud and mobile technologies, mapping and geospatial data are more widely available — and accessible — than ever.

What is location intelligence?

Location intelligence is a method of deriving insights from location data to solve a business problem.

Location-based data enables organizations to understand what’s happening in the field, which helps them reduce inefficiencies, optimize their processes and better serve their customers. It improves their ability to do things like:

• Locate the source of service interruptions quickly
• Deploy teams and resources to where they’re needed
• Rapidly identify and remediate potential hazards

This allows organizations to, among other things, minimize delays and reduce safety incidents, improve productivity, and increase customer satisfaction.

BCG’s survey found that the more that organizations incorporated location-based data into their business strategy, the more value they realized. For example, the firm saw a 30% improvement in key operational metrics, such as Average Time to Fulfill Service, between location-savvy businesses and those that were just starting out. Customer-related metrics, such as net promoter score and customer satisfaction, doubled. Naturally, they concluded that companies must derive new ways to leverage geospatial data to achieve higher levels of operational efficiency and maintain profit margins.

But collecting and analyzing location-based data is a challenge if you don’t have the right tools.

‍

Location data from the ground up

Many enterprise organizations invest in large-scale GIS platforms such as Esri to view and analyze geospatial data. But in order to realize the true value of location data, you need to harness it at the point of collection — and that means putting that power in the hands of your field teams.

Most GIS tools are too sophisticated for laypeople to use directly — which drives demand for easy-to-use, location-aware mobile apps that can capture location data quickly and efficiently at scale.

Fulcrum is a no-code application development platform that enables organizations to digitize mobile data collection, deploy apps, forms, and reports, deliver field workflow automation, and drive location-based insights, without relying on teams of developers or IT. It also integrates seamlessly with your existing GIS programs and enterprise systems so you can get high-quality location data to your GIS analysts instantly and create a feedback loop that enables you to continually optimize your data-collection processes.

Every record collected in Fulcrum is automatically geotagged and time-stamped, so you can see, in real-time or near-real-time, the status of your operations — whether through your GIS tools or the Fulcrum dashboard — and make faster, more data-driven decisions.

You can even upload custom map layers from your existing GIS tools into Fulcrum so the information your teams need (for example, municipal or property boundaries) is available to them on their mobile device, even if they’re not connected to WiFi or cellular service.

Fulcrum closes the gap between the field and the office with location data that is captured once and instantly accessible from anywhere. It also enables your mobile workers to:

• Generate fully formatted reports for managers, clients, and other stakeholders the instant an inspection is completed
• Automatically kick off processes in other applications to improve fulfillment timelines
• Post new information to maps in Esri, CARTO, and other GIS tools for real-time geographic visibility

Want to see Fulcrum in action? Request a demonstration today!

This post originally appeared on the Fulcrum blog.