19 Apr Case Study: Strategic Location Planning
Most businesses can be summed up as a series of what-if decisions—from planning quarterly initiatives to anticipating which markets will be ripe for expansion over the next decade. As the ultimate owners of those decisions, executives know all too well the perils of insufficient information. Now a new application of artificial intelligence (AI) is helping them fill in critical gaps.
First piloted in the financial services industry, the process has broad applicability across commercial sectors. It combines the elements of AI and location intelligence that have drawn the attention of businesses worldwide: vast quantities of actionable spatial data, modern analytical techniques, and the domain expertise and culture to make data-driven decisions possible.
The process uses location intelligence, AI, and predictive capabilities to show executives what kind of performance they can expect from a retail location that has not yet been built. Financial executives, for instance, can order a full-year revenue projection for a bank branch in a market
they’re evaluating and receive it in seconds.
Until recent advances in artificial intelligence and computing, this brand of analysis was confined to business mythology. Now, leading-edge companies are testing its capabilities and recognizing its potential impact on long-term business planning.
The new approach relies in part on drive-time analysis, which has been a feature of geographic information system technology for years. Drive-time analysis crunches data associated with the population around a specific location—a prospective bank branch, for example—and delivers a smart map showing that branch’s likely audience. Recent breakthroughs in GIS and AI have elevated the sophistication of that analysis, showing executives not just the branch’s geographic trade area but its expected cost and anticipated revenue, too.
In a retail landscape roiled by disruption, some executives are planning expansions, while others are looking to retrench. Insight—not just data—is key to their planning. With a new methodology built on predictive power and speed, those executives are conducting the what-if scenarios that will help drive their business forward.
Depending on their business objective, an executive might compare several potential retail sites, revealing the expected sales of each and determining the best possible location. Or they can plot several locations as a network of branches, using the process to avoid encroaching on any location’s sales and to understand the revenue impact of the network as a whole.
Today’s what-if scenarios are growing increasingly sophisticated with the help of AI, computing capabilities, and GIS-driven location intelligence. Without this new brand of insight, business executives are left to plan major investments based on intuition and assumption.
Unleashing GIS Technology’s potential in every industries