In the short- to mid-term the company will still concentrate on supporting multinationals which have UK headquarters, but it will gradually roll out support and services in other European markets. Since it was acquired by mapping software developer MapInfo it has become commercially feasible to do so. His company had not previously been able to meet this demand because of the cost of sourcing all the relevant data. They want the same software and approach and the same data in each,” says Brian Wade, managing director of The Data Consultancy. They don’t want to have different sorts of data and a different feel to the system in each country. “Blue-chip multinationals are increasingly looking to plan regionally or globally. With the inclusion of drive-time isochrones (a polygon applied to a map which covers all locations within a given time distance from the centre of the shape), it means users can plot sales territories, distribution networks and branches. The system allows for business mapping, routing and road network analysis across the whole of western and most of eastern Europe.
The Data Consultancy is one example of a supplier that has entered this market, with its Cartique product. Recent developments have changed this, however, allowing users to operate a single, multi-territory system that allows common data sets and descriptors to be applied. Until recently, users were generally limited to single-country systems, with the UK offering the most well-developed data sets. The most useful tool for business planning of this kind is the geographical information system (GIS). And with the growing regionalisation of retail and manufacturing, these companies want to make such decisions on a pan-European basis. Their interest is in deciding where to site new retail locations, or what the catchment areas are of existing sites. What is true is there are plenty of marketers who do want to get a satellite-style view of the terrain, and who are very interested in where consumers are driving to. Nor is it especially believable – remote sensors could not tell the difference between a munitions factory and a hospital in recent missile strikes on Iraq, for example. Why they should want to do this is not entirely clear. They can even make out a car’s number plate. If the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, there are satellites orbiting the Earth that can spy on individual consumers.
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