June 29, 2021
In today’s increasingly data-driven world, it has become imperative for businesses to make sound decisions based on high quality data. For instance, access to Point of Interest (POI) data can allow companies to gain deeper insights on footfall traffic, store performance of competitors, contextualise stock performance of different brands, etc.
In this article, we briefly explain what POI data is and how you can make the best use of it!
Points of Interest (i.e. Place of Interest) data is a geographical representation of a physical location on a map. The most common POI types include public areas (parks, metros), commercial or residential locations (like retail stores or apartment buildings), and landmarks (like museums or parks).
You might not be aware, but we use POI data all the time. Every time you order food via your favourite app, use a ride-hailing service or check out a new restaurant on Google Maps – you are actually using POI data curated by specialised companies.
Apart from the B2C use cases mentioned above, businesses can also use POI data to analyse trends, patterns and more, to come up with new strategies. Regardless of whether you are an advertising agency looking for a better way to plan your media campaigns or a hedge fund choosing if you should go long or short on a stock option – POI data will be the underlying factor helping you make the right decision.
Admittedly, implementation of geospatial business intelligence (BI) in commerce, financial institutions, ad-tech, real estate and other industries, has never been more vital or accessible than it is today, and POI data has become a critical component of it.
Geospatial Business Intelligence powers organisations to gain an understanding of what is happening within or around their locations of interest; it contextualises a location and provides better insights on a customer, a competitor or a market level, and helps to identify specific challenges the company is facing. These insights can only be drawn out with the help of high quality and scalable POI datasets. Analysing this information can help you fine-tune your business operations with an intelligent, data-driven strategy.
Using rich attributes of POI data and complementing them with alternative datasets such as anonymised mobility patterns, demographic data, stock information, accessibility data, transaction data and etc, enables multiple companies and organisations to fuel their data models with granular information for a more representative analysis of the location in question.
Some examples of the direct applications of POI data for enhanced contextualisation include site performance analysis, urban planning, and competitive benchmarking, to name a few.
Given the current Covid-19 crisis, POI data can be used by market research companies to analyse the impact that the pandemic has had on retail outlets across the globe. Analysing data over the past 18 months can give researchers context about the closing rate of specific outlets to better assess just how drastic of an impact the pandemic has had on global, regional and local franchises worldwide.
Brick-and mortar retailers can map out relevant locations along with data attributes like mobility or popularity index based on footfall analysis to derive competitive insights into store performance. Other use cases of POI data could be for commercial real estate firms seeking to facilitate site selection and conduct trade area analysis. Additionally, AdTech companies that work on location-based targeting use geofencing techniques to create virtual parameters around their areas of interest. This allows them to catch their target audience’s attention at the right time and place. You can read more about the different use cases of POI data in our blog post here.
In conclusion, POI data fuels a large variety of use cases across different sectors; from retail to advertising, to investment management, urban planning, and much more. Regardless of what your role is, if you strive to help your business improve its bottom line, then POI data is certainly worth considering.
Not sure where to start? Talk to one of the data experts to learn how POI data can be relevant for you to scale your business.
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