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Pitney Bowes MapInfo Unveils Location Intelligence Component for IBM(R) Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Software
Wednesday 02. July 2008 - Viewing Data in Map Format Enables Organizations to Better Spot Trends and Discover New Opportunities, Resulting in Better Business Decisions
Pitney Bowes MapInfo, the leading global provider of location intelligence solutions, today introduced the Location Intelligence Component (LIC) for IBM Cognos 8 business intelligence software. Customers in all industries, including retailer Camping World and public entity MassHousing, the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, can now incorporate location analysis into their IBM Cognos 8 BI applications to more efficiently monitor and analyze their enterprise data.
“The LIC provides an easy to use graphical interface that enables users to leverage the geographic dimension within their data to enhance traditional business intelligence analysis,” said Jon Winslow, director of business development at Pitney Bowes MapInfo. “Users are now able to more easily identify geographic patterns and trends in their operations and share these insights across their enterprise. Armed with this visual information, organizations are better positioned to address problem areas and more quickly and confidently take advantage of emerging opportunities.”
Camping World in Bowling Green, Kentucky
With 80 retail stores nationwide, Camping World uses the LIC together with IBM Cognos 8 BI to determine new retail sites, and to develop merchandising and marketing campaigns across its recreational vehicle products and services catalog, retail and Web site businesses. Prior to adding location intelligence, the process of visually providing relevant data from all its businesses to the companys executive management team was a challenge. By combining location intelligence and business intelligence, these analyses are even more effective and tasks that used to take days, can be completed in hours. Product sales data can be quickly mapped to identify which areas of the country are generating revenue and what are the most popular products by region. As a result, Camping World is able to develop promotions targeted to specific regions of the country, and execute more targeted marketing plans about which products to showcase at regional RV shows.
MassHousing, Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency
MassHousing, the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, works with a plethora of building and financial partners to provide affordable housing to the Commonwealths residents. Since the organization shares information with many partners, it needed a way to easily and effectively map and share geographic data across the state. By integrating the LIC into its existing Cognos dashboard, MassHousing can now present data in a geographic context. The LIC is packaged in a format for users across the organization to easily query data and create accurate maps in a matter of minutes. For example, MassHousing can examine how many communities are within a 10-minute walk to public transportation and create demographic layers over that map to better understand what locations are being under-utilized.
“Pitney Bowes MapInfo location intelligence offering provides our BI customers with an opportunity to geo-spatially analyze their corporate data as well as offer decision makers powerful visual insight into that data from a geographic perspective. This extends the value of their business information for greater productivity and operational effectiveness,” said Don Campbell, CTO, Cognos, an IBM Company. “Across industries, customers are now able to add location specific analysis to business intelligence capabilities to quickly and effectively solve business challenges like creating balanced sales territories, finding gaps in geographic coverage to create routing and workforce efficiencies and putting stores closer to customers through site location analysis.”