The future is here, and managing a connected and growing world, responding nimbly to rapid technological change, advancing in competitive markets and staying safe in the digital and the physical space are individual challenges that could each demand an enormous investment of time and talent to meet. Put them all together and you have the future of business. Meeting that future and succeeding in it will take innovative application of the newest technologies in location intelligence solutions, geospatial data analysis, marketing analytics, and other breakthrough ideas for applying technology to the way we live and do business.
The Changing Landscape: People
In just 40 years, the world’s population is projected to grow by more than 50%. There are currently 6.5 billion humans on the planet. If estimates hold, that number will be more than 9 billion by 2060. That enormous population is aging, too. By the year 2030 experts estimate that every 100 European workers will be supporting a pensioner population of 40 people aged 65 or more. To understand what that means, consider that in 2008 every 100 workers were supporting a mere 25 pensioners. The world’s population is expanding, with more and more people getting connected every day, and everyone increasingly interested in efficiency.
The Changing Landscape: Technology
Demographic reporting has always been a challenge, but today’s demographic reporting tools make it far easier to understand demographic changes and use location intelligence solutions to advantage in understanding those changes. Most of the world is now connected to a GPS receiver, which can tell the current time accurately to within 100 billionths of a second. At any given moment, at least 24 GPS satellites, and often more, circle the earth. Those satellites are connected not just to smartphones and computers, but also to the Internet of Things: those untold millions of items that are not computers or mobile devices, yet are connected to the Internet and are capable of sending and receiving information. Add to that the RFID tags used to track the movement of objects. In 2011 there were 12 million of these tags sold, and projections estimate that by 2021 there will 209 billion items with RFID tags being sold every year.
The Location Intelligence Solutions Industry
With all this data freely available, it is incumbent upon businesses to learn how to apply it to smart business practices. A global business survey from Dresner Advisory Services found in 2014 that half of those they surveyed, across all industries, cited location intelligence solutions as critical or very important when doing business planning. The Gartner research company believes that within two years there will be 4.4 million jobs available in big data and that only a third of them will be filled in a satisfactory way. The potential for using spatial analysis, geospatial data, and location intelligence solutions is vast and still untapped in many ways.
Making Sense of Location Intelligence Solutions
Effectively using big data means planning a strategy, collecting information, reporting on that information, and then analyzing data to make sense and use of it. Experts from Google suggest that 15% of big data resources be allocated to capturing information, 20% to reporting, and 65% to analysis. This means a high demand for those familiar with cartography, photogrammetry, surveying, and geography, to name just a few areas. It also means finding and utilizing software that partners with leading cloud technology companies to deliver efficient collection and analysis.
To stay on top, companies need to look to the future and allocate the necessary resources to gather, report, and analysis the enormous amounts of data now freely available to them. Finding marketing professionals and software innovations capable of providing location intelligence solutions should be an integral part of all business planning models.
