Understanding Location Intelligent Systems

Business Intelligence (BI) is a tool, which transforms data from an organization's disparate operational data, into a common environment (data warehouse) for turning data into information, information into knowledge, knowledge into strategies for profitable business activities. Typical BI systems handle the ‘who', ‘what' and ‘when' but the “where” is underexploited or sometimes unexploited. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enables the analysis of the “where” because eighty percent of company's data has location component. Further visualization helps the analyst interrogate the data. For a complete operational picture of the business it is necessary to add location component (supplied by GIS) that is the ‘where' of the data to the organization's data (provided by the conventional BI systems). Location Intelligence is the ability to take organizational data and apply location to allow effective decision-making. GIS enhances BI analytics by exposing the influence of geography on behavior, activities and processes. Adding maps to the reporting output of BI allows decision maker to easily visualize the geographically influenced behavior, activities, trends and processes, communicate the same within the organization for improved analysis and decision making.