This year’s Intelligent Enterprise Expedition hosted by DMTI Spatial, a location information management vendor, offered its partners and customers a glimpse of some of the ways that location intelligence and data management solutions can benefit enterprise businesses.
The event, held in Toronto by Markham, Ont.-based DMTI, focused on its Location Hub solution, a technology platform built on Microsoft’s (NYSE: MSFT) .Net framework that allows businesses to view addresses, consolidate data, help with data cleanliness, validation, data enrichment and infill. The solution also comes in a variety of deployment options which include software-as-a-service (SaaS) as well as on-premise, therefore providing partners and customers with more choice in the field.
David Sonnen, senior consultant of spatial information management research at IDC, said although this is still an emerging technology, many enterprise businesses are already showing signs of interest.
“What we’re seeing in Canada is a bit more progress towards standardization than in the U.S.,” Sonnen said. “That’s because there’s been a lot of standardization at the government level and that creates a wealth of opportunities in this sector.”
Other industry verticals also slowly picking up speed are markets such as insurance and finance, Sonnen said. These sectors are using the technology as an organizing principle in their business to aid with their marketing and audit needs.
Greg Martell, national director of platform and emerging solutions at SAP Canada, said organizations across all markets are looking to drive innovation and they want faster time-to-value and increased agility and insight into their end-to-end business processes. Therefore, he said having an enterprise-wide information management strategy in the business becomes key to helping them gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. SAP’s partnership with DMTI, he said, is important for helping to enrich content and knowledge about location for location intelligence strategies.
“It’s a dog eat dog world out there,” Martell said. “How are you to improve your chances in the market if this type of warfare exists? You need to be able to visualize new revenue opportunities and we think what we have helps you generate new revenue and potentially save costs too.”
He points Master Data, which he says is defined as the DNA that makes up a business. It’s the key components that help run a business such as customers, products, parts, employees and suppliers.
“We’re using DMTI’s Location Hub to connect to our SAP enrichment tool,” Martell said. “With the Lender Application Form, businesses can verify in real-time addresses through Master Data Management via Location Hub. It’s a key part of our Enterprise Services Oriented Architecture and it’s Web services with a business context,” he added.
For the channel, Sonnen said there are plenty of opportunities for system integrators and software partners with the technology. However, he cautions partners to be careful when it comes to selling and implementing location intelligence technology.
“For the channel, the revenue opportunities right now are hit and miss,” Sonnen said. “This is uncertain because this is still a fairly new technology. As a channel partner, you have to be very careful about how much you take on and implement at once. But this is expanding and in a few years, we think that instead of this just being used in a geospatial context, it will also move to business intelligence, CRM and to other enterprise applications,” he added.