The Future of Analytics: Integration of Business and Location Intelligence

The image is a courtesy of DALL-E. Thanks, mate!

On the 3rd of August 2021, Ondrej Tomas, CEO & Co-Founder of CleverMaps, and Zdenek Svoboda, SVP of Product & Co-Founder of GoodData, hosted a webinar on the Future of Analytics: Business and Location Intelligence. They shared interesting thoughts on the future development of analytical ecosystems, enrichment of business intelligence by location insights, and more.

Recently, CleverMaps ran a successful POC with the newly released GoodData.CN platform that shows how well Location Intelligence complements standard Business Intelligence visualizations. However, the simple combination of the two visualization tools is not enough; GoodData, the same as CleverMaps, thinks about the future. In the future, Business Intelligence will be headless.

Data Analytics Today: Inconsistent, Monolithic, Inflexible

Many companies are developing their analytics interfaces using multiple tools and platforms. Consequently, some inconveniences, such as different results across these tools, can occur because most tools and platforms create another copy of the analyzed data that is nearly impossible to keep updated. Most importantly, each tool uses its own proprietary calculation of the results. 

Consequences of inconsistent analytics tightly coupled with the insights consumption layer

Modern Analytics: Real-Time, Consistent, Interactive

The concept of Headless BI decouples the data model and computation engine from the insights consumption layer. Meaning that all the aggregations, filters, metrics, and indicators are formed at one place with the same calculation logic and over the same data. This approach ensures that all consumers receive the same and consistent results.

Consistent results for all consumers achieved with the concept of Headless BI

Location Intelligence Today: Monolithic, Manual

Today's location intelligence is mainly represented by standard GIS (geographical information systems), which works completely differently than most business intelligence tools. In most cases, all the analytics must be precalculated outside of the system and then loaded back for the visualization. The visualization itself usually works as a raster picture overlay. There is no data model, no computation engine, and limited possibility of real-time analytics. Therefore, limited chance to fit the Headless BI concept.

On the other hand, GIS systems have their place. For some use cases, there are no better choices. However, when it comes to business analytics, a system initially designed for analytics will do a better job and, most importantly, fit your existing analytics stack.

The principle of today's Location Intelligence

Modern Location Intelligence: Real-Time, Consistent, Interactive

On the other hand, CleverMaps is changing the paradigm of working with location data. The architecture is very similar to most of the BI platforms. The core is the semantic data model that combines internal business data and external location data. On top of the data model, metrics and indicators are defined just like in a BI system. This principle allows the separation of the visualization layer from the analytics, as is required for the Headless BI concept. 

The principle of Location Intelligence in CleverMaps

Modern Business and Location Intelligence Together

CleverMaps ran a successful POC with GoodData.CN platform that demonstrates CleverMaps' ability to become a part of any company's modern analytics ecosystem. After all, data is better understood in context, and what gives the best context to location data than a map?

Combination of BI and Location Insights

Watch The Webinar Recording

For more information on the topic, watch the recording from our webinar.