SmartCity Blog

GIS Gives Businesses a Competitive Edge

GIS intelligence about customers, business locations and socioeconomic trends helps companies gain a competitive edge

 

Imagine knowing before launching a marketing campaign in a new neighbourhood that the profile of your customer is already there. Or being able to gain a first mover advantage by selecting a new business location in an up-and-coming neighbourhood based on the socioeconomic trends before your competition moves in driving up real estate values.

As business evolves, getting an edge in the marketplace can be very advantageous. Today, with new technologies popping up and data becoming more readily available, businesses can take advantage of both data and technology to gather valuable intelligence about their customers, business locations and socioeconomic trends.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) marries the art of cartography and strategic decision making by utilizing geo-referenced data (data with location markers attached, e.g. postal code, county, or neighbourhood). This specialized data has been long underutilized in strategic planning and decision making, mostly due to its unavailability. However, this trend is reversing.  Most of today’s demographic and social media data that is being collected is geo referenced. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft are just a handful of companies that have realized the potential of these specialized data sets.

The days of business leaders using subjective techniques to map key target market characteristics to strategic plans are dwindling.  By utilizing GIS and the most up-to-date quantitative datasets, businesses can take the guess work out of identifying existing and potential customers as well as competitors. In addition, depending on company owned source data, trending, regression and other analysis can be combined with geo referenced public data to provide further insight into your customer base and competition.  

Within the next ten years - because of the ship building contract, the off shore oil and natural gas exploration and the Muskrat Falls project - many businesses will be vying to find their place in Halifax. It is our belief that the businesses which will truly succeed within this expanding marketplace will be the ones that are most familiar with the city and its population. Today in our great city of Halifax the municipal government has been kind enough to open their data sets for anybody who wants them. One of the greatest things about HRM’s data is that much of it is geo referenced. Geo-dem will take full advantage of this data not just in displaying it but also data mining it to explore the true potential of it. 

Analyzing things such as real estate prices, population density, and neighbourhood profiling and general services can be very valuable to businesses at any stage of growth. These are only a few examples in a vast range of options when it comes to business intelligence and Geographic Information Systems.

 

Author: Charles McIlveen

Charles McIlveen is the CEO of GEO-DEM, a Halifax-based consulting company specializing in providing clients with demographic analysis and information needed for effective strategic decision-making. For more information visit www.geo-dem.com.

In Case You Missed It: Small Business and Big Finds – Part 2

In case you missed it, this week in Halifax also had its share of exciting finds and big announcements– both close to home and on the other side of the world.

The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board announced Friday that Shell Canada has won the right to explore four separate offshore deepwater parcels believed to contain significant potential for oil and gas. Shell, with offices in Halifax, has committed to spend $970M over the next six years to explore these parcels, which are located 200 kilometers south of Halifax. The announcement is great news for Halifax’s oil and gas industry, as Shell’s commitment to explore the parcels could eventually pay dividends for both the company and our region.

In other exciting news, Erdene Resource Development Corp., a Halifax junior precious metals company has found encouraging amounts of gold while undertaking exploration in Mongolia. Things have been moving fast for the company: the potential deposits were only identified late last year, but the success so far has everyone, including CEO Peter Akerley, feeling like they may have made a significant discovery. And on top of this big find, the company also received their first royalty cheque for $165,000 after a partner company started commercial production at a property in Georgia.

So in case you missed it, you’re now in the know.

For more information, check out:

http://www.shell.ca
http://www.erdene.com/

 

Mike MacKenzie is the Communications and Marketing Assistant with Greater Halifax Partnership, currently working as a Bachelor of Public Relations co-op student.

A lover of all things communications and strategy related, Mike is often known to spend his free time analyzing the latest-and-greatest PR/advertising campaigns. As a relative newbie to the Halifax scene, he can also be seen strolling the streets of downtown looking for the next cool thing that the city has to offer.

Bringing Research to Life

Transforming great ideas and innovations into commercially viable products can be challenging without the right supports, connections and partnerships.    

Recognizing this issue, Atlantic Canadian universities partnered six years ago to create Springboard Atlantic, a strategic network that maximizes the commercial potential of the research coming out of the region’s universities, and also links higher education expertise and facilities with the region’s industries.

Today the successes are evident and Springboard has expanded and evolved to include 19 university and college partners with an increased emphasis on industry collaborations that will bring innovations to the marketplace. Springboard participants include about 50 professionals who have a mix of industrial and research expertise - typically staff or heads of university or college technology /industry liaison offices.

Two local success stories – one from Dalhousie University and the other from St. Mary’s University – demonstrate the Springboard effect.

 

Just-in-time-Support

Dalhousie University’s Measurement of Accuracy when Resin Curing system (MARC) is a good example of Springboard Atlantic’s commercialization mission in action.  

Developed by Dr. Richard Price, a practicing dentist and professor in the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie, and his assistant, Christopher Felix, MARC provides a solution to a problem that has troubled dentists for decades – getting just the right amount of energy from a bright blue UV light to cure and harden filling resin. MARC solves the problem by using custom-designed software to measure the light output, factor in variables like tooth location and the resin type, and calculate the precise output.

Dr. Price knew that MARC could be a very valuable instrument but he didn’t know all the steps to get it into the hands of dental professionals.  He approached Dalhousie University’s Office of Industry Liaison and Innovation, and Director Kevin Dunn was able to mobilize funding quickly from Springboard just in time to produce high-quality prototypes to take to a major U.S. dental conference.  Springboard also supported the formation of a new venture, Blue Light Analytics, to develop and market MARC.

 

Expecting the Unexpected

Retired St. Mary’s University economics professor Andy Harvey, spent over 30 years studying the movements of people in cities.  The Halifax Space-Time Activity Research (STAR) project began in 2005 with Dr. Harvey as the Principle Investigator. It collected data from more than 2,000 households across HRM using GPS technology to learn more about neighborhoods, including the nature, timing and location of the activities of residents.

With ACOA funding received through its Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF) program, the STAR project team developed a complex suite of geographic information systems (GIS) software that had serious commercial potential.  That’s where Nova Scotia-based IT solutions company Britech Information Systems came in.

Britech recognized the potential of STAR right away. With assistance from Springboard Atlantic and St. Mary’s Industry Liaison Office, Britech is packaging STAR as a traffic-flow management system for the trucking and transportation business and is considering other commercial applications. The suite of products is being sold under the brand name Nomad.

The partnership between Saint Mary’s and Britech exemplifies a level of collaboration that benefits both organizations.

 
Springboard’s Strengths and Success Factors

• identifying new ideas and concepts that have real potential as products or services
• making  direct connection between industry and higher education research and facilities
• being at the front end of the innovative process
• working with a number of innovation partners, including the federal research funding councils (NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC), the National Research Council, and Innovacorp
• marketing and licensing technologies to industry and entrepreneurs
• supporting the creation of new companies based on platform technologies

 

Halifax is Canada’s smart city.  We have one of the largest concentrations of universities and colleges in North America and one of the best educated workforces in all of Canada.  This series explores and celebrates the numerous post-secondary assets in Halifax; the sector’s impact on our economy and community; research and commercialization; and partnerships between post-secondary and business.

This post was contributed by Springboard’s Central Office Team in Halifax, located in the InnovaCorp Enterprise Centre, at a new building on the Dalhousie Campus.. For information contact info@springboardatlantic.ca