Addressing the Internet of Things

by Robert Szyngiel, Director, Product Management (Data/OEM Partnerships), DMTI Spatial

In the 21st century, connectivity plays any important role. Everywhere we go, connectivity surrounds us. At the office, at home, in the car, our society today depends and relies on being connected in some way.

Everything that we do today, connectivity plays a significant role. Our phones seamlessly connect with our cars through Bluetooth and instantly we have hands free calling. Our TV’s connect with the internet to provide us with entertainment at the blink of an eye. Even when we go shopping, RFID tags are added to merchandise on store shelves allowing for product to be replenished faster for customers. Connectivity affects all of our lives in some way.

At first, it would seem that it is only the devices are having this conversation.

But there is something larger being created – the Internet of Things.

As per the European Commission - Information Society and Media DG – the Internet of Things is defined as:

“A world where physical objects are seamlessly integrated into the information network, and where the physical objects can become active participants in business processes. Services are available to interact with these 'smart objects' over the Internet, query and change their state and any information associated with them, taking into account security and privacy issues.”

All of this communication will be enabled without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. All of these combined connections will strengthen the power of this ecosystem and its ability to deliver new insights.

The SRI Consulting Business Intelligence group has suggested a technology roadmap for the Internet of Things.

We now find ourselves in the period (2010-2020), where more vertical-market applications will be developed as the location awareness between people and everyday objects increases.

One of these everyday objects are the addresses where we live and work.

Through the identification and pervasiveness of each unique address and its location – new conversations between machines and humans can be enabled.

Examples include:

• A home owner leaves their house and the phone communicates with the house to arm the alarm as the home owner leaves their geo-fence
• The business needs to calculate the precise distance between the address (home/business) and the network to decide how to best service the end customer

The possibilities are endless and will be defined by the imagination of providers to the consumer and business markets.

Gartner has indicated that most enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the possibilities of an expanded Internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready.

Four basic usage models that are emerging include:

• Manage
• Monetize
• Operate
• Extend

These can be applied to people, things, information, and places (or the four “internets”), and therefore the so called “Internet of Things” will be succeeded by the “Internet of Everything.”

The address will be a crucial link between people, things, information and places.

This important piece of the internet of everything is already online.

@RobertSzyngiel

Read more on CanMap^® Address Points, the most accurate Canadian individual address points at rooftop and parcel level here >>

DMTI Spatial has been acquired by Neopost!

We are thrilled to announce that DMTI Spatial has been acquired by Europe-based mailroom solutions provider Neopost. Click here to read the full press release >>

“The DMTI team is thrilled to be joining Neopost,” said John Fisher, CEO, DMTI Spatial. “This acquisition will benefit DMTI and most importantly, our customers. Neopost will provide DMTI with the necessary investment to continue building rich, location-based solutions for our customers and partners.” As the European leader and global supplier of mail solutions, Neopost is progressively building a portfolio of new activities to enhance its offer and support its clients’ needs in areas of Customer Communications Management, Data Quality and Shipping Solutions, including logistics and traceability.  DMTI Spatial will join the Data Quality and Master Data Management business unit, Neopost’s fastest growing product segment. Client server and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions developed by DMTI Spatial are adaptable to other countries and cultures and effectively complement Neopost’s portfolio of customer and address-focused solutions. The acquisition will enable both companies to deliver exceptional product and software offerings to a global market. Neopost has presence in 90 countries with 5,900 employees and annual sales of CDN $1,417 million (€1,007 million) in 2012. Neopost is positioned in the visionaries’ quadrant of Gartner’s influential 2013 Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools. Gartner has stated that the market for data quality tools has become highly visible in recent years as more organizations understand the impact of poor-quality data and seek solutions for improvement. Gartner estimates that this market reached $960 million in software revenue at the end of 2012.

Optimizing Business Location Placement

Deciding where to place new business locations is an important decision. You’re looking to optimize placement while considering the proximity of your current and prospective customers, your other existing locations, and the placement of your competition. These factors can all affect your profitability.

Prime Location

In the diagram below the three stars represent prospective locations for a new branch. This particular municipality has a river and controlled access highways (displayed in red) that restrict mobility and the amount of time it takes to reach a location. While a customer may appear close to your prospective location, the actual amount of time to reach your branch may be longer than expected due to restrictions on his/her mobility. Therefore, the customer may not visit your branch since it’s too far.


Drive Time Analysis

Drive time analysis is the act of illustrating how far an individual can drive from a particular point in any direction within a given time. By connecting the ends of all possible routes, you end up with a boundary surrounding the initial point. The second diagram demonstrates this with the coloured zones that surround the potential locations from our first diagram.
The results of drive time analysis provide you with a great deal of insight. You can segment current clients by which drive time boundary their addresses fall within (the green, peach and purple zones) to group them by branch. Additionally, you can identify where two potential branches overlap (the red zone) and compete for the same individuals, hurting your overall profitability. You can also run drive time analysis multiple times and make slight changes to branch placement until you've found an optimal location.


Solution

Through drive time analysis, DMTI can help you determine the best locations to build new branches. Maximize profitability by placing your branches in the optimal locations to capture market share.

Visit our website for more information or try our interactive demo.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

There is an old adage within marketing that “birds of a feather flock together.” Individuals of like characteristics tend to cluster together within neighbourhoods. Therefore, by targeting marketing campaigns at the neighbourhood level, you can increase overall campaign effectiveness through more precise segmentation of address information.

Current Paradigm

Canadian marketers currently tend to rely on census or postal codes to segment customers geographically. This is represented in the diagram below with the coloured areas representing different 3-digit postal codes. While these methods allow you to divide your market, they still result in fairly large territories. It’s possible to get more granular to increase the level of segmentation.



Micro Neighbourhoods

DMTI has developed the concept of a micro neighbourhood. This is a way of geographically segmenting based on addresses that have a relationship to one another such as demographic profile or technology spending. Looking at the second image, we’ve zoomed in on the original pink neighbourhood from our first diagram to see individual houses with a common property valuation. Individual addresses are marked via the yellow dots placed on each rooftop, and using DMTI technology, you can easily group these individual properties to customize your target marketing efforts and increase effectiveness.



Improved Analysis

In the image below, you can see how micro neighbourhood analysis is used to compare and contrast addresses, with the green and blue dots representing current and potential customers respectively. When you begin a marketing campaign, you immediately benefit through the ability to analyze existing customers and new prospects at the same level of granularity. You can also use your own criteria to define the scope of these micro neighbourhoods; they can be as granular as required depending on the level of localization desired. An additional benefit is your ability to run campaigns at the address level without obtaining client contact information such as name and phone number, which are often hard to come by.



Solution

DMTI Spatial can help you group addresses based on geographic location and common characteristics. You can now analyze current and prospective customers side-by-side to develop highly targeted marketing campaigns that will increase profitability.

Visit our website for more information or try our interactive demo.

The Power of Place

Our last Strategic Insight Session, held on June 25th, 2013 featured Tony Olvet, IDC Canada and Stuart Levings, Genworth Canada as well as Executives from Purolator, Tridel Group, NEXSYS Financial Inc., Project X Labs, ESC Corporate Services and First Canadian Title.

Watch the summary of this event, as well as our other session videos >>

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