MapIT chief executive Etienne Louw
Digital mapping is increasingly part of the tools that small and medium businesses as well as corporates use to drive smarter business decisions. This is one of the key findings of the Digital Mapping in South Africa 2013 survey released earlier this week.
Examples of the use of digital mapping include tracking vehicles, mapping out routes for delivery vehicles, understanding where customers are physically located and analysing trends in a visual environment.
Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of research company World Wide Worx, said the survey indicated that there were three key areas in which companies were exploiting digital mapping solutions: improving efficiency, increasing security and enhancing productivity.
These three areas have different levels of importance to corporates and smaller businesses. Listed companies placed equal emphasis on all three elements but small businesses tended to prioritise security above efficiency and productivity improvements.
Speaking at the launch of the research, mapIT chief executive Etienne Louw said that companies were increasingly aware that being able to map transactions in a physical space provided real benefits to them.
He said that the growing movement of South African companies into Africa had reinforced the value of accurate geospatial information.
Goldstuck said the survey indicated that the number of companies that use digital mapping solutions specifically for location-based marketing exercises is likely to show a dramatic increase over the next 12 months.
Location has long been known to be a key indicator for marketing activities, but for most companies it has been next to impossible to have more than a vague idea of where to target their marketing.
Duane Slabbert, geospatial analyst at MediaMap, said that by taking basic mapping information and overlaying data from multiple sources (such as census data and data from consumer surveys) on to the map, it was possible to understand not only where potential customers lived, but also how specific products can be targeted at areas that are most likely to buy them.
This level of information could be used to ensure that promotional activities reach specific communities that are likely to want to buy a product, rather than limiting such activities to a provincial or even metro level. This saved marketing budget and ensured more efficient use of resources, he said.
The same level of information could also be used to plan future retail developments.
Although property owners have been using market analysis to plan developments for years, mapping different levels of information on a digital platform "massively increases" the accuracy of the intelligence gained from such an exercise. The use of paid-for mapping services was, according to Goldstuck, primarily restricted to larger organisations, and most smaller organisations used free services.
Slabbert said that the natural evolution of mapping services was for services that are only available to large organisations today to be repackaged for use by smaller companies and even individuals.
"Much of this data could be used for an increasing level of decision making, including where to buy a house or where to stop on the way home to buy food for supper," he said.
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