Business Tomorrow Depends On Decisions We Make Today

Carrying on a proud Canadian tradition of innovation in mapping technology.

An oldie but a goodie.  I recently ran across this article called Digital age mapping delivers productivity gains published back in 2010 that made some good predictions about the direction of technology and has a lot of application for all the loyal fans of MapWarehouse out there.

The article reminds us that mapping has always been a big part of the Canadian tradition through history, often because our country has a lot of land and is rich in natural resources.  From the development of our economy during the fur trade, to the precursors of modern day GIS pioneered back in the 60's, right up to modern day business applications using geodata in real-time to guide decisions moment by moment, Canadians have been mapping technology leaders.

"Maps have been used for centuries to guide business ventures - for instance, mapping of the northwest played a key role as the Hudson's Bay Co. traded for furs. But the more recent combination of maps with electronic databases and Web-based technology is opening new frontiers."

As the article mentions, however, and I'm sure anyone who's ever hunted around for reliable data providers would agree, these days, the offerings for American data are far more substantial in quantity, quality, and convenience than what we find for our own back yard.

The article goes on to list all different industries and how they use spatial analysis to improve business productivity. Definitely worth a read if you're in banking, insurance, dispatching any type of service in the community, or manage complicated operations like airports, manufacturing, or hospitals.

Take way message: digital mapping is now a standard part of doing business. From online store locator maps to complex engineering plans, regardless of what industry you’re in, chances are, some aspect of your business uses location based information and services.

So, there are two options if you want to have all the benefits of location intelligence in your business; you can try to collect and maintain your own data sets, which can work, but requires significant investments in time, training, infrastructure and so on, or, you can grab whatever random data you can find online for free, cross your fingers that it's accurate and hope it fits the bill for what you want to do.  Difficult choice.  Neither option is ideal if you're concerned about business success and productivity.

Here's an easy choice to make and it will only take a few minutes of your time. Head over to MapWarehouse, Ontario's largest geospatial data marketplace, and check out the aerial imagery and spatial data inventory that's been collected by First Base Solutions and its reputable data provider partners over the last 15 years. One stop shopping at its best! It's easy to search your area of interest, the data quality is suitable for many purposes, and you can download the data and start using it in just a few minutes.

Speaking of downloading data immediately, why not check out some free imagery and data samples here. You're going to like what you see!