“Data is choking the Software that was supposed to eat the world”(Part II)

As a leader, you need to find the pain points in your business and solve them. And you need a simple way to think about them so you can more easily make decisions. Why are pain models important? They can help you define the bridge between your issues and the solutions to said problems. In a world where too much data makes it harder to really know what new technologies are the ones to bet on, you really need a firm grip on key pain points!

In our last blog post, we fleshed out four types of pain that companies can use to answer the question, “Can this technology work to enable my business?” What are those pains described simply?

Pain #1: You don’t have enough people to help you find the problem

Pain #2 You don’t have the data to know its a problem

Pain #3: You don’t know it’s a problem before it’s too late

Pain #4: You can’t provide the transparency your customers demand

Seeing your business in ways you never thought possible

Once you have a firm grasp on good generic filters for assessing your need for a particular technology, the next step is to demonstrate how technology can address these problems. As a purveyor of novel 3rd party data, it is important to build a bridge between new technology like Geospatial Intelligence and your business pain. Like any new technology, if you can’t pressure test its ability to solve a client's business pain then it isn’t worth considering. And while there are four types of business pain 3rd party data can help you with, you have to assess where your pain is greatest and to what degree said technology can provide the right answers.

How Geospatial Intelligence can help you solve the people problems

Today, the amount of satellite data collected is so vast it would take thousands of analysts to even begin to sift through it on their own. To this end, the question isn’t whether geospatial data is valuable but under what circumstances can it be made efficient enough to use it to solve business problems. To start, one could argue you need an agnostic and intelligent way to leverage the data. This means great data science. It is one thing to collect geospatial data, it is another to have the algorithms that enable you to get the cleanest, validated, and most accurate output when you need it. If your platform relies on you to do all the work, then you won’t be able to know how to best apply and leverage the data. Orbital Insight’s approach brings great data science that allows you to balance and utilize multiple geospatial data sources for your specific needs. This takes the people processing out and puts the speed to insight in. The software creates efficiency but the client gets the confidence and control of what they want to see in order to enable faster decision making.

Why Geospatial Intelligence is a strong 3rd party data solution

Geospatial data represents a snapshot of the world in a way never before available. Being able to monitor changes on the Earth is such a novel way to think about learning about your business. Just being able to “see” anything anywhere in the world; whether it's what changes on the face of it, how people travel it, or where transportation means move can tell a poignant story in ways that are still being imagined. You don’t need to know who is moving where or why they are going from place to place but observing at a high level the patterns of life represents an innovative manner in which to garner new ways to think about solving problems. It is capturing geospatial data in its natural form that creates a different way to solve this pain.

What geospatial intelligence can do to help you see “ripples across your business”

The hardest thing to do in any situation is to anticipate problems before they happen. Just like a security alarm system in your house, you need a warning system for business. So if you are managing your supply chain, for example, how can you know there is an issue upstream? You could collect 1st party data from each and every supplier you have. This would give you a great picture of any ripples that could hit you. But what if the ripple is a piece of equipment that breaks that is critical to a component of your product? To do this you will need a 3rd party perspective that demonstrates that pattern of life has occurred. Imagine the power to see where patterns change in places you didn’t know had anomalies? Geospatial data is a power that can help drive great collaboration where it doesn’t exist because the warnings can drive discussions in a more neutral and timely manner. The ripple effect of change across your business is critical to “seeing” pain you didn’t know you were even going to have.

When consumers demand transparency, create an unprecedented approach to it

If consumers want to know their products are pure, clean, and additive to the environment, then you will need a new way to show them you are in control. If you are making cookies and want to make sure the palm oil used to make them is coming from the right sources, you better have a way to prove that. If you want to be sure that your farmers are expanding their farms by deforesting land, you better be able to check all the way to the source anywhere in the world to ensure it’s true. Companies will need innovative ways to use tools to build processes that quantifiable identify the sources and methods being used so their claims are backed up with facts. Geospatial views of the world will help bring this to life. It will create new standards of measure capable of ensuring that the demands of a new concerned consumer are being met and the pain you feel when you can’t prove it or answer will vanish.

If you believe Geospatial Intelligence can solve your pain...now what?

That is the billion-dollar question, isn’t it? By seeing how geospatial intelligence addresses a series of issues many of us have in making our business run better, we can move on to the application. At Orbital Insight we continue to develop novel ways to answer questions about your business in ways you can’t. We like to think of it as helping you “see” anything anywhere in the world by giving you an unprecedented vision of the world. Whether it’s sustainability use cases like deforestation, elucidating your supply chain to look for disruptions you can possibly know before they happen, or identifying patterns of life where you do business the ways to apply this data is almost limitless. But regardless of how limitless its potential is, if it doesn’t solve your business problems there is no point in starting the dialogue. If it does, give us a call!

Curious about the digital transformation of supply chains? Check out our eBook to learn about seven keys to your supply chain success and how to modernize supply chain management using geospatial data:

https://orbitalinsight.com/res...