Geographic Information Systems

GIS in Business

In today's fast moving world, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are becoming an important part of mainstream business and management around the world, and in may diverse organizations.

In recent years, the banking industry has been undergoing drastic changes, reflecting a number of underlying developments. Significant advancements in communication and information technology accelerated and broadened the dissemination of financial information and financial services and also increased the complexity. Another key impetus for change has been the increasing competition among a broad range of domestic and foreign institutions in providing banking and related financial services. Regulations are forcing the banks to adopt better operational strategies and upgrade their skills. All these are throwing more challenges to banking sector.

A customer-centric business model can help address these challenges. A bank's primary function is to deliver financial services and products to the customers. Banks, today, need to be market driven and market responsive. The success of such an institution depends on its approach to data management, customer relation management. Banks manage a world of information about customers, customer profiles and so much more. By adding a component called "Location" to their database, banks can gain enormous advantage in many ways. Long range planning mixed with geographic modeling will yield tangible benefits to the Banking /Financial institutions community.

Sectors where GIS in Business

1. Banking

2. insurance

3. Media

How GIS can benefit banks

GIS plays an important role in various functional areas of banking in achieving the various business objectives of banks such as

1. Expansion of Customer base

2. Improvement in Quality of the Services

3. Increased Customer Satisfaction

4. Consistent Business Growth

5. Increase in Profitability

GIS helps in banks various functional Areas by providing support in decision-making and strategic planning. Some of the major areas are discussed below.

Market Analysis

In today's highly competitive Business environment, Marketing is a customer-orientated operation that is essential for business success of any bank. Marketing departments of the banks face real problems in fully understanding their markets and the potential customers for their finance products and services. GIS based Marketing analysis proves relevant and useful in this context. In general, marketing is a question of demand (customers) and supply (Financial products, financial services, Customer services through branches and ATMs). Both demand and supply are easy to pinpoint to a geographical location. Therefore, these factors are interesting to analyze with the help of

GIS

The development of GIS technology has made a new approach to the marketing analysis imperative. It also reveals the importance of geo-demographic research to marketing. All kinds of market segmentation techniques are being developed to define more precisely the target group of customers

Customer Analysis

This analysis answers the queries, where are our customers located? What are their characteristics (market segmentation, classification of residential areas)? Catchment area for the branches can draw and areas, which are not served, can be easily identified. Spatial analysis using the socio-demographic information may give indicative patterns.

New Branch / New ATM Location

Business expansion planning needs modeling location-relevant data and providing fast and cost- effective site analysis to confidently and reliably select a new bank branch/ATM location