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byVicki Kwiatkowski
Published
Location, location, location. How many times in business have we heard that expression? Originally, when uttered by the late Lord Harold Samuel — a British real estate tycoon — it described the most important consideration in property development. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for the phrase to be applied to business in general.
Fast forward half a century or so. Now when businesses talk about the importance of location, they’re talking about their customers, not themselves. That’s because digital transformation affects the channels by which businesses engage with their customers, so understanding a customer’s location is vital.
In whatever industry you operate, from retail, ecommerce and manufacturing to financial services, transportation and healthcare to travel, leisure and entertainment — location is king.
Location intelligence is the process of deriving meaningful insight from location data to solve a problem or create a more powerful solution. For example, a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Loqate revealed several areas in which businesses are beginning to employ location intelligence.
In the study “Location Intelligence Drives Competitive Edge in the Digital Age,” a majority of firms stated that intelligent use of location data was critical or important to various business functions, including relationship management, marketing, operations and IT. Almost two-thirds of respondents confirmed they were beginning to employ location intelligence in customer experience areas, such as digital and mobile engagement.
Moreover, 50 percent of firms believe location intelligence is “extremely critical,” “critical” or “important” to their business. Over the next three years, Forrester expects that figure will jump to 77 percent, so the trend in location-based customer engagement is gaining serious momentum.
The Forrester study surveyed the use of and attitudes towards location intelligence across the US, UK, Germany, the Nordics, Austria and Benelux. It included the responses of 253 decision makers from various sectors and more than 1,500 consumers who had recently purchased products or services online.
To learn more about the strategic value of location data, please read the Forrester study “Location Intelligence Drives Competitive Edge in the Digital Age.”
Although consumers are justifiably concerned about how any of their data — including location data — is used, at least half the consumers surveyed expressed interest in allowing brands to use location data if it meant their customer journey could be personalized.
Sixty-three percent were interested in receiving discounts and promotions based on location, while over half were in favor of its use to improve customer service and the checkout experience.
Not only does location data help organizations raise their game when it comes to the digital customer or partner experience, but it also gives them the means to build stronger long-term relationships that contribute to business growth.
While firms are increasingly keen to use location intelligence, they often don’t know how to use the data in a compliant manner. The Forrester study found that 46 percent of the firms surveyed lacked the technology to allow them to analyze and execute with location data.
More than half of businesses stated their location data was poor quality, resulting in communication issues with customers and difficulty offering the best possible journey. In other words, bad location data can get you into a heap of trouble.
Data quality can make or break a business. With high-quality data, businesses communicate effectively, increase conversions and ROI and make better decisions. With bad data, not so much: Higher costs, damaged brand reputation, less than optimum decision-making and poor communication with customers are the results.
Data quality and data governance are especially important for businesses working with location data. It ensures all customer address data is complete, accurate, trustworthy and standardized — allowing you to gain a comprehensive and accurate understanding of customer location.
That’s why Loqate partners with Dell Boomi to help solve the fundamental challenge of address data entry in ERP/CRM systems, as well as supporting data quality management in back office processes. With Boomi DataHub and Boomi Flow, we created an enhanced global address capture and verification capability.
The integration of Loqate’s address data and technology with global datasets for over 245 countries and territories delivers front-end, real-time address capture and back end batch address verification and enhancement. The powerful combination of Loqate and Boomi:
Our Global Address and Capture solution is a practical example of digital transformation in action. It changes the way that business and IT can work together to create entirely new ways of collaborating with customers and partners.
To learn more about how you can use location data to improve and accelerate your business, check out our partner technology brief, “Boomi for Master Data Management: Workflow Automation.“
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