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2016 – the year geospatial analytics makes a comeback

Stuart Wilson, the vice president for EMEA at Alteryx, highlights how the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to propel businesses to discover geospatial analytics all over again this year.

As with any emerging technology, it is impossible to accurately predict the future value of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the UK. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that IoT is still five to ten years away from bringing significant economic value to industries, yet it wouldn’t be an overstatement to think that London has the potential to become the IoT capital of the world in the near future. Less than a month into 2016, and a consortium of London universities, NGOs and government agencies have pooled their resources into a £24 million IoT research hub in the capital.

The possibilities IoT can bring are endless, and there are many drivers for the trend for networked objects improving lives, cutting costs and propelling business growth. While IoT has been a prominent topic of discussion in the technology space for several years now, this will be the year that data analysts move beyond merely collecting data generated by these connected devices, and begin combining various sources of data for deeper analysis.

According to a leading industry analyst, only 23% of organisations are presently using location intelligence to make business decisions. With the plummeting cost of semiconductors and the rise in self-service analytics platforms on the horizon, this is set to change dramatically this year.

For many companies, figuring out how key variables interact based on their physical location will become critical. As shoppers continue to move more fluidly between their laptops, mobile devices, and stores this year, there is a pressing need for the retail sector to stay competitive – and data analytics has been the lynchpin for market differentiation. According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the retail sector has been at the forefront of big data use, which helped it to weather the recent recession and contribute £90 billion to the UK economy in 2014 by using information from data analysis to boost supply chain efficiency and revenues.

In the UK, we work with a lot of large retailers with analysts who are vigilant in looking out for demographic changes, store revenue projections, and other metrics. However, the retailers that are leading the charge are those who have started thinking about geospatial data in this new age of connected devices, possibly incorporating data on proximity to the nearest store, for example, to provide enhanced and tailored customer experiences. There is a lot of scope for retailers to explore connected devices like beacons to understand where in the store visitors spend most of their time, and which products they spend most time looking at. All this data is useless without analytics. With this knowledge, store managers can reorient their products on the shop floor, and can continue to tweak these metrics as they’d like, using real time analytics for guidance.

This is also the year we see greater use of geospatial data in the transportation industry as more cars get connected, and public transportation systems across the world gain larger degrees of automation. Today in the UK, connected and autonomous vehicles are being developed and tested on roads in Bristol, Coventry, Greenwich and Milton Keynes, underscoring the UK’s unique position as a leading hub for automotive R&D. In order to maintain this position of innovative excellence, the government has backed the drive for connected autonomous vehicles to the tune of £200 million in the 2015 Budget. That’s 25,000 jobs created in the UK’s automotive industry, and 300,000 additional jobs in related sectors by 2030. What does this mean for analytics? Connected and autonomous vehicles will generate an exceptional volume of data, potentially opening up a range of opportunities for consumer engagement and even monetisation for the data owner. This will become another frontier for technology companies and insurers to garner a competitive advantage.

The benefits of geospatial analytics will become increasingly clear in 2016, especially in unexpected industries. For example, healthcare services company Cardinal Health uses geospatial analytics to understand where to build and establish locations for specific, time-sensitive pharmaceuticals. These outlets are used to produce cancer detection medication which only has a six-hour shelf life, so being close to where the medicine is consumed is of critical importance.

On a larger scale, healthcare organisations will be able to analyse spatial and temporal data to predict movements of disease outbreaks over time and adequately prepare for potential epidemics before they occur—more aggressively now than ever before.

In many respects, data is moving from a cost centre to a revenue centre. I’ve seen many organisations start to harvest this IoT data as a way of providing new kinds of services to their customers and differentiating from their competition. In the US, John Deere, the green tractor company used across farms in America, is essentially a big data company. By collating data from its tractors, the company has transformed its product into intelligent machines that deliver more value to its end users. IoT analytics has differentiated John Deere’s equipment from competitors for better servicing and maintenance, and through automation, these machines can recommend various methods and procedures based on soil and type of crops. Clearly we’re in a good place, entering 2016 with the knowledge that harnessing big data and analytics can not only help transform businesses, but also create entirely new revenue streams and business opportunities.