I think it was in 2005 Roger Mougalas from O'Reilly Media first coined the phrase “Big Data” and to be fair not many really understood what it meant, but data drives our business, it helps you make decisions and in today’s blog I’m going to share a story about one of my very first projects as a software engineer.
My very first contract as a software engineer for hire was in a call centre in Watford UK. I was contracted to make the back-office systems better. That was the remit and I had no idea of what I was walking into.
This was in the late 1990’s and the concept of “Big Data” was not really a thing but this organisation was very forward thinking, cutting edge you might say, and my first task was to improve the centre’s reporting facility to see the performance of the centre month by month.
I was the 3rd contract developer hired as the two previous had not achieved anything substantial for the owners.
I still remember the process and that very first meeting to this day. The owners of the centre wanted results. They wanted up to date monthly reports and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t and why two developers so far had failed. I suggested it was not what they wanted, the process was wrong and that the current reporting process of taking last month’s data and trying to process what was several million rows in different spreadsheets, was never going to work. I was surprised they did not fire me on the spot, but they gave me some time to explain. So, I talked about direct integration on a daily basis, ran daily reports that got merged into weekly, monthly and then quarterly reports.
I had no idea how, but with all the data they captured I knew this was the right way to get accurate reporting. I did manage to build what I had clearly laid in my vision and gave the owners exactly the performance reports they needed. Unfortunately, this led to about 10% of the call handling floor being made redundant as the operation was not efficient.
Years later I met the owner again at an event and he stated that it was those reports that made the business profitable and it was those reports that allowed him to sell it for several million pounds. I suggested I just made the tech work, he was the one who made the difficult decision, but he did buy me a coffee.
This was my first foray into analytical data however it didn’t involve data by location to track where calls were coming from, back in 1998 this had not really been thought about as an indicator.
Today if I was to do it again, I would very much include geospatial information which would have defined products and calls by area.
The thing is, there are many ways to collect, collate and analyse data for your business and get many different views. With tools like Power BI from Microsoft or Tableau now owned by Salesforce you can achieve many chat views. With Mapsimise you can achieve many data views with your data by location. You can share views on your website for customers to search i.e. where your outlets might be or other important information you hold like current events or office locations. Mapsimise is a connected data platform which allows you to build layers of information, gaining location intelligence and the ability to build relationships from different data layers. What is more, you can also use Mapsimise to plan activities like routes for sales teams to visit customers, or for service engineers to complete installs or equipment fixes.
In our next blog we look at connected data, what it means to your business and how your teams can benefit from having location views.
How to get started with Mapsimise
If you are ready to get started with Mapsimise, it's so easy! Start visualising your data on one or more maps by signing up to your own Mapsimise account and get started. Follow the steps below:
- Firstly, visit our website Mapsimise.com
- Click Get Started
- Select the package that suites your organisation
- Fill in the registration form
- Validate and log in to your Mapsimise account (by email)
- Add your billing information and select the connectors or upgrade from your Go Package
If you get stuck, you can sign into the Help Desk and raise a ticket with Mapsimise Support OR click here.
We look forward to working with you and helping you visualise your data, gaining location intelligence.
