Simon: Location intelligence is now being used across industries. Today, more than 7,000 organisations in nearly every industry sector around the world rely on MapInfo technology and expertise. MapInfo location intelligence solutions are particularly in strong demand in vertical markets such as retail, financial services, telecommunications and public sector.
MapInfo helps the retail, real estate and restaurant industries better understand their customers and markets. By integrating MapInfo’s location-based expertise, software and data, we help them make better decisions about market and product potential, store location and demographics resulting in increased revenue and decreased costs.
MapInfo location intelligence solutions are used by the world’s largest telecommunications companies to control and monitor network infrastructure, find the most profitable customers and evaluate competitive threats.
National, State, city and local government agencies rely on MapInfo location intelligence solutions to reduce crime, build stronger communities, coordinate emergency response planning and deploy e-government solutions.
Financial services providers rely on MapInfo solutions to reduce risk, select optimal branch sites, provide world-class customer services and improve time to market. Insurance carriers use MapInfo solutions to reduce risk and make better underwriting decisions.

Simon: Initially, location intelligence was largely applied only by government organisations to create e-government solutions. There is a constant need to analyse data from multiple sources and manage it across multiple platforms, make sense of more complex information — in context — then render that intelligence in clear, compelling visual presentations and share their findings throughout and across agencies and jurisdictions and with their constituents.
In recent years, location intelligence technology moved into the mainstream. For example, location intelligence is now being leveraged by commercial enterprises for business intelligence; and valued for how it can have a positive impact on business growth by uncovering new opportunities, increasing workforce productivity and enhancing profitability.
Nigel: Five years ago, typically a GIS manager within an organisation would be the key person with specific needs for location intelligence. Today however, the need for location intelligence has moved beyond this department and its value is recognised across the enterprise. In India for example, MapInfo partners with our distributor Tata Consultancy Services to offer true enterprise solutions that integrate location intelligence.
Simon: Addressing the needs of business decision makers is different from that of GIS users. Decision makers are not focussed on technology. They are not interested if a piece of technology has a particular added feature or function. What matters to them is whether the location intelligence solution is proven and if it can help them fix a business problem, how they can leverage on the existing company data to drive more insightful decisions and what sort of return on investment they could get from implementing the solution.