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Location Data and the Telecom Industry

Top 5 ways the Telecom sector is leveraging Location Data

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Read to know why 70% of telecom companies are convinced that accurate location data is critical to their success

A telecom business has to face a range of burning questions on a regular basis: Where are my customers? Where is my crew needed the most? Where do I need to expand capacity? Where is my network lacking quality? Each of these questions has a foundation in spatial information.

For an industry as competitive as telecommunications, understanding relationships, trends, and patterns in a quick and efficient way is imperative to keep up with the evolving market dynamics. Location data helps telecom operators to visualize the myriad layers of data in a manner which is easy to understand and interpret. But even more importantly, it helps unlock pertinent insights previously not available to the business. So, it’s not surprising that the 2018 Location Intelligence Market Study by Dresner Advisory Services pegs location data as a key success factor for 70% of telecom companies.

Let’s discuss some of the most profitable ways in which the telecom sector is leveraging location data…

1.  Market Segmentation

Location data is the underpinning of all market segmentation activities like identifying high-revenue areas, segregating customers on the basis of their demography and buying behaviour, ascertaining where new building projects are coming up, or even undertaking a competitor analysis. Prudent telecom operators are using location data to boost their intelligence with customer profiling and determine the potential of the market correctly. This further allows them to determine where new capital investment needs to be allocated and where marketing budgets should be channeled for maximum impact.

2.  Network Analysis

Using accurate location data gives operators and crew instant access to customer details, enabling them to map signal quality information with their user base and identify where the signal strength is good or poor. Being able to visualize assets geographically also allows for better monitoring of the network and expedition of maintenance and repairs. And when it comes to making inroads into an already competitive market, precise location data helps telecom companies to identify new market opportunities in the proximity of their assets and expand network capacity in a cost-effective manner. Which brings us to the next point in our list…

3.  Capacity Planning

To plan and manage their capacity judiciously, telecom companies not only need to be able to map their current user base properly, they should be able to locate the pockets of future growth meticulously. Using location data, companies can zero in on new prospects by leveraging insights into current profitable customers to look for similar prospects. Here, the intelligence derived through market segmentation activities also comes into play. Location data analytics provide a solid decision-support ground for capital investments.

4.  Serviceability

The importance of providing a definitive and timely service cost assessment for new customers is not lost on progressive telco businesses. Accurate address information gives the sales team the confidence to upsell products without worrying about the availability of those services. When it comes to analyzing and tracking the serviceability for commercial accounts, telcos can easily map location information against serviceability and make sure a new customer opportunity does not turn into a bad customer service problem. Businesses can even plan to increase serviceability based on the competitive insights derived from authentic location data.

5. Customer Service

Effective customer relationship management gives a much-needed competitive edge to telecom companies. Having a unique address identifier  for each customer can eliminate communication errors and boost the speed and quality of customer handling. By resolving user queries and complaints in a timely manner, operators can improve the relationship between the company and the customer, thereby reducing the chance of a customer jumping to another provider (churning). They can also make significant cost savings by reducing the need for return visits by the field crew.

In a nutshell, location data is a strategic planning tool the telecommunications industry can use to enhance its capabilities, reduce errors, and carry out processes more accurately. Forward-thinking telcos are already using location data to improve market penetration and enhance their network design and coverage. To know more about how your telecom business can leverage location data for better operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, contact us.

Additional Reading:

A telecom operator’s guide to selecting a 5G cell site with Location Intelligence

 

Location Intelligence and Summertime

The productive days of summer?

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Many businesses think summer is the time to relax. It’s also a great time to gain a competitive advantage through location intelligence and data insights.

Your summer business strategy may consist of three (3) simple steps to gain that competitive edge:

  1. Look for easy access to data
  2. Ensure comprehensive data selection
  3. Better understand your risk

Look for Easy Access to GIS Data

When looking for risk related data:

  • Confirm the data is available through a web service.  This allows you to integrate information into your current platform such as the Purview AVM data and perils related data.
  • Understand how to obtain the highest match rate between your database and data services. This helps to avoid ambiguous addressing through the use of a unique address identifier (UAID®).

Location Intelligence Success Story

Lenders using DMTI Spatial’s™ Location Hub® platform can search the national Purview web service using the UAID which is assigned to every address for Canada with roof-top precision.

Ensure Comprehensive GIS Data Selection

Teranet partnered together with DMTI Spatial to provide complimentary capabilities to shared clients. This partnership provides clients with a complete view of their data.

Teranet DMTI Spatial
Addresses
Property Ownership Flood
Property Valuation Earthquake
Equity Estimate Crime
Comparable Sales Environmental Risk
Fraud Checks Demographics
House Price Index (HPI) Firmographics

With over 15M addresses in Canada, having access to the most comprehensive risk-based information at the property level allows insurance and finance companies to generate new insights.

Understand Your Risk

With this wealth of location-based information businesses can benefit in the following ways:

  • Understand the risks associated with specific geographical areas and leverage that knowledge to fine-tune pricing
  • Link disparate information for real-time decision making
  • Enhance portfolio analysis across the entire book of business

Summary

Take advantage of the down-time that summer offers. Evaluate your current systems and workflows and explore solutions that provide comprehensive information to help you hit the ground running in the fall.

Learn how location intelligence can help your business by contacting DMTI Spatial.

Using data to find your ideal customer

How well do you really know your customers?

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“They don’t know that we know that they know we know!” – Phoebe Buffay

What do you know? About your customers that is.

Most likely you have assumptions and these assumptions are often backed by data. Perhaps a survey that was conducted a few years ago, or through your experience with your clients first hand. Regardless of how you have acquired this intel, what you think you know about your customers is what should drive your business. But does it?

Effective Market Analysis to Target Your Ideal Customer

Who is your ideal customer? Your absolutely worst customer? Who would you be lucky to nab this quarter? Who could be your Lighthouse Customer?

These questions swim around every Marketer’s, Sale’s and Product Manager’s brain when building new marketing campaigns or planning new sales initiatives. The reality is, we think we have a good idea but may not have enough data to back it up.

Try googling “Ideal Customer”. A lot of businesses think they know the secret formula, but it should be you who determines who is ideal for your business.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Who do I want to be partnered with?
  • Will I take any customer? Or do I want to portray a branded image?
  • Do I want to grow my business from the outside-in?
  • Does my database contain updated and accurate information about my customers?

Once you have begun to identify who your target customer should be, let the data tell you otherwise. From our experience at DMTI Spatial™ the data often surprises our clients. Most are unaware their database contains inaccurate and outdated data. Often times CRM’s are not kept up to date when employee attrition or customer churn takes place. Your data is what drives your business, not the other way around.

Using the Right Technology for Customer Insights

Need help cleaning this mess up? Start with the basics. Cleanse your address database. Then, ensure your customer records are up to date. Are you customers current? If not, when did they leave?

Once you’ve done this, enrich the data with as much information as possible. What campaigns went out to these customers? When did we reach out to them last? Start with the basics and build a rich repository of data.

Your data is what makes your business unique. Leverage and exploit this well of information to determine who your actual ideal customer is.

Need help? That is where Location Hub® Analytics comes in.

To learn more about how location analytics can help your business, shoot us an email or give us a call at 1.877.477.3684 .

Location Intelligence for Enterprise

Challenges, Drivers and the Need for Location Intelligence

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Even organizations that understand the value of location intelligence struggle to translate that understanding into meaningful profit-generating activities.

Much of the difficulty stems from the challenges of marrying enterprise data, which is typically housed in relational databases, to fully spatial-enabled information. New solutions that provide access to a platform of technology and crucial data building blocks that are integrated into an enterprise’s information processing cycle are available.

The result is a clean, current and consolidated view of enterprise information revealing new opportunities to enhance profitability.

3 drivers of location intelligence in the enterprise market are:

  1. The availability of high quality, current and complete data: Commercial geographic content providers are getting more sophisticated in the data offerings made available (e.g. to the building units in apartment buildings) allowing for a hyper-local perspective in business applications not previously available. Full service providers of location intelligence include subscriptions to geographic data that is maintained and developed on an on-going basis.
  2. Growing awareness of location-enabled services: Location intelligence has been popularized by business to consumer (B2C) applications from Internet search portals and personal navigation device (PND) vendors; and this increased awareness is moving into the Enterprise segment of the market.
  3. The rise of web services as a better-faster-cheaper deployment model: Software as a Service (SaaS) is now recognized as an agent that transforms how companies do business and is one of the most compelling innovations allowing for deployments of location intelligence that are cost effective. Solutions and delivery models are maturing and can be adopted without any disruption to existing IT structures or data modeling applications, reducing the attendant risk and expense.

More and more, the value of location intelligence is being linked to strategic and operational success at an enterprise level. As a means of generating revenues and controlling expenditures, location intelligence can directly impact profitability. Click here to learn more about how DMTI can help you leverage location intelligence.

Marketing Relies on Location

Strong Marketing Relies on Location. Here’s Why.

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Accurate location information may not be the most exciting topic for your next dinner party, but under the hood most businesses depend on it to fuel their business processes, and to help them reach the right audience to drive marketing results. The ability to access accurate location information is impacting many of our customers because strong marketing relies on location. Let’s explore why.

Inaccurate Location Data Impacts Business Growth

Inaccurate location data can be a major inhibitor to growth in your business.  Marketing relies on location, and with more than 85% of customer data tied to a location component, it’s important that your company operate on valid and accurate data.

Customer and prospect data isn’t static – customers move, postal codes change and rural areas become urbanized.  As these changes occur, customer location information quickly becomes outdated. In fact, research by Sirius Decisions shows that 30% of B2B data is out of date within 12 months.  To put this into perspective, if your company has a database of 100,000 records and neglects to implement address quality measures, over 50% of your customer records would be entirely outdated in just over 3 years!

The Impact of Outdated Data on Marketing

Outdated data has an impact on sales and marketing. It’s estimated that 30% of marketing campaigns never make it to the intended recipient. That’s wasted marketing dollars, time and efforts – but most of all lost sales opportunities!

According to a study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), every dollar spent on direct marketing advertising, on average, results in $12.61 in direct marketing-driven sales.  Calculate how many marketing dollars you can save by focusing on data quality. Maintaining high data quality can help you drive better results and get you to your revenue targets that much faster.

We see that marketing relies on location, and location data acts as one of the information backbones for all your company operations.  Having accurate location information allows you to move beyond simple addresses – it allows you to integrate cloud based solutions to integrate demographics, firmographics, proximity, drive time, drive distances and many other variables into your decision making process.  This additional data can help you gain invaluable insights about your customers, and identify new markets.

Accurate location information solutions will allow your company to:

  • Visualize your market penetration to help you plan your new campaigns
  • Prequalify and identify new entry markets to increase marketing reach
  • Increase direct mail delivery by up to 30%
  • Reduce customer churn and increase customer satisfaction
  • Boost your campaign metrics
  • and learn more about YOUR customers!

Click here to see a free demo of DMTI’s Location Hub for marketing! 

Understanding location-based marketing

The Continued Rise of Location-Based Marketing

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Location-based marketing is helping a whole new generation of marketers understand how using data helps them better find, target and message to their best prospects and customers.

A report from Juniper Research estimates that revenues from the Mobile Context and Location Services market will reach $43.3B by 2019 almost 4x the current market valuation at this point.

But how should marketers leverage location to better understand and reach their customer base?

How to Leverage Location to Understand Customers

The first thing to take into consideration is the accuracy of your location data, or the location data of your ad provider. Paying for ads that are presented to someone who is nowhere near your location defeats the entire purpose of location-based messaging.

According to a study published by ThinkLinear in July of this year:

“The problem is that, on average, only 34% of ad requests that include latitude and longitude data are accurate within 100 meters of a user’s location. That means advertisers are paying to target a user in a specific location, but the person isn’t really there. Advertisers aren’t getting what they paid for, performance suffers, and the whole industry ends up looking bad.”

In these types of instances, providers like DMTI Spatial are able to bring their GIS knowledge to the table to help – transforming traditional address data into geocoded roof-top accurate locations to ensure that advertisers have a much more accurate data set to work with.

How Different Demographics Use Location-Based Services

The second element to consider is how people access and leverage location based services.  For example, a recent survey posed by the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) titled “The Internet of Things: The Future” found that:

Women are slightly more likely than men (54 percent vs. 47 percent) to share data from their connected car in exchange for location-based coupons or discounts.

Men are more likely than women (33 percent vs. 22 percent) to share data from their connected car if informed of potentially interesting locations along their route.

These behavior patterns mirror what we as marketers might expect from the non-location marketing based world, but are worth taking into consideration when considering the use of location-based marketing to reach out to your customers.  Who are you looking to target, and what information do they want to receive from you on their mobile device.

The combination of behaviour and location are quickly pulling marketers, particularly in the retail space, to focus on location-based offers.  The launch of the Apple iBeacon and Google Glass last year are heralding a new era of communications as customer visit retail locations.  Large brands, including the Bay, Lord & Taylor and others are leveraging the new iBeacon technology, along with location intelligence to message to potential customers.  And it appears that the public is interested too – 77% of us are OK with sharing our location information while we shop, and 81% of those receiving mobile messaging read those messages.

Does your organization have precise location data for your customers?  How will your organization take on the brave new world of location-based marketing? Click here to learn more about how DMTI helps marketers leverage location data to increase the ROI of marketing campaigns.

What CRM Tools have to do with a Bugatti

Would you put low octane gas in your Bugatti?

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Of course you wouldn’t, that would be unheard of! You would spend more to ensure you’re powering it with high octane fuel. The car would still run with lower quality gasoline, but its performance would suffer. CRM tools are similar to sports cars. They’re expensive and powerful, but they’re limited by how they’re powered.

The Mistake Companies Make with CRM Tools

Many companies spend thousands of dollars annually on their corporate CRM system. It’s the engine that drives them, and as a marketer, you rely on it daily. Yet with such a large spend and high importance, many organizations don’t spend enough effort ensuring the quality of information captured inside.

Customer, prospect and partner information is the fuel of the CRM. Poor data quality leads to communications breakdowns, slower transactions, ineffective analysis and wasted time. Studies show that inaccurate information can result in a 30% revenue decrease.

With interconnected systems, CRM data flows into other tools including financial and marketing systems, multiplying the impact of incorrect information. There are a number of causes of poor quality data. Manual user errors lead to missing or incorrect information. Combining multiple sources of data results in inconsistencies and a lack of standardization.

How does your organization ensure it’s working with the highest quality data in its CRM system? Click here for more information on leveraging the right market data for your CRM system.

Leverage Location Insight geofencing

Leveraging Location Insight to Drive Business Opportunity

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It’s clear that we live in an increasingly mobile society. Distance and time are reduced by technology and lifestyle.  But even in our virtual world, we still focus on the locations where we live, work and play. At the same time, the data we create has grown in volume and complexity. In order to effectively meet the changing needs of our mobile society, businesses must leverage location insight to drive new opportunities.

Business Data and Location Insight

According to a Deloitte report, 85% of all data has a location component. Many businesses are aware of the value that having good data can bring from a business perspective. You must have current, correct, complete and accurate location information. This helps to identify new opportunity through more effective targeted campaigns, and to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers. You’ll also improve targeting of new prospects.

The ROI of Location Insights

When data analytics is used correctly, the end result can lead to tremendous success for a business’ marketing efforts. Union Gas for example, leveraged location data along with key demographic content to focus their marketing campaigns.  This led them to the right audience with the right message:   Promote energy conservation programs to eligible clients in an effort to reduce natural gas consumption among this group.  As a result Union Gas realized a 400% increase in the uptake rate of their marketing programs.
For more information, check out how Location Hub is helping businesses use data insights to grow their customer base.

Additional Reading:

Leverage Location Intelligence for Precision-Targeted Direct Mail Campaigns

Customer Insights and Location Data

Unlock Customer Insights with Location Intelligence

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In today’s crowded marketplace, there is immense pressure on marketers to deliver customer insights that lead to new opportunities. These insights increase revenues and differentiate their product offering through successful campaign initiatives. One powerful example is the impact bad data can have on marketing efforts. In this use case, we look at current address information.

Impact of Current Address Information on Marketing

140 million addressed mail pieces don’t make it to the intended recipients and 70% of undeliverable mail is attributed to people who have moved. This means marketers must leverage accurate location information to their competitive advantage.

Successful customer insights begin with accurate and current address information to increase campaign effectiveness. Marketers can expect to see an increase in ROI by approximately 5% and reduce operational costs associated with erroneous data. Location Intelligence empowers marketers with the means to assess the ‘who’ and ‘where’ when maximizing marketing decisions.

Success begins with accurate and current address information to increase campaign effectiveness, increase ROI by approximately 5% and reduce operational costs associated with erroneous data.

View our video on Location Intelligence to see how it empowers marketers with the means to assess the ‘who’ and ‘where’ when maximizing marketing decisions.

Click here to see how DMTI’s market analysis tools help marketers