Optimising Your Business with GapMaps on AWS Data Exchange

In today’s competitive landscape, making the right location-based decisions can be the difference between a thriving business and a missed opportunity.

As one of the leading global location intelligence platform providers, GapMaps continues to change the way that we help organisations approach site selection and expansion strategies. Recently, we took a significant step with the integration of our global premium point of interest (POI) and demographics datasets into the AWS Data Exchange, which provides a one-stop shop for AWS customers to procure the data needed to inform their physical location decisions on a local or global scale.

“In today’s always on digital world, customers expect self-service environments to easily procure their data products and, for businesses like GapMaps, the AWS Data Exchange provides a seamless experience to extend the reach of our premium datasets to AWS customers,” said Anthony Villanti, GapMaps Managing Director and Founder.

Bridging the Data Divide

Through this relationship, AWS customers now have the power to use our premium datasets to fine-tune their physical location decisions and market expansion plans across Australia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and North America. The implications here are significant, as it provides access to hyper-localised data in countries that have traditionally been fraught with inaccessibility to quality data.

For years now, data has always been hailed as the new oil in modern business landscapes, but access to quality data has remained a persistent challenge across Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East, particularly in the realm of location intelligence.

As such, that’s why we believe our decision to integrate into the AWS Data Exchange will cut through these data barriers and, in turn, empower organisations to unlock new untapped potential markets with confidence.

Fuelling Informed Decisions with Granular Insights

The salient feature of GapMaps’ datasets lies in its granularity. Our data intelligence team does a lot of work pairing many different datasets so we can provide comprehensive and valuable insights in specific catchment areas, including an understanding of the relative distribution of the consuming class through a city or district down to 150 metre grid level. This has proven to be highly correlated with store performance for the majority of the brands that we work with in Asia, India and the Middle East. For example, in India we categorise households down to SEC A & B classification so brands can easily identify locations where households are capable of purchasing non-essential goods and services down to 150m grid levels.

Additionally GapMaps utilises mobile device or human movement data so brands can see where people spend their time and identify worker and resident population densities between different locations and population growth areas.

These micro-level details provide an unprecedented edge in understanding local catchment demographics and consumption patterns.

To further enhance the global coverage of our demographics data, we have recently partnered with Applied Geographic Solutions (AGS), a leading supplier of premium quality demographic databases in North America. As a result, AWS customers can access its basic and premium datasets via the AWS Marketplace which includes over 40,000 attributes covering demographics, neighbourhood segmentation, consumer spending, crime & environmental risk.

Tracking and Adapting with Real-Time Precision

One of the most compelling aspects of the datasets is the agility they afford. The POI datasets, updated regularly, keep a finger on the pulse of the market, offering invaluable information on store openings and closures for leading brands across fast food, café, fitness, supermarket/ grocery sectors and locations which generate foot traffic to retail precincts such as shopping centres, schools, universities, hotels and hospitals. This real-time aspect underlines the adaptability that’s essential in a dynamic market environment.

For businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve, these datasets provide alerts on shifts in competitor location strategies, ensuring that decisions are not just informed but optimally timed as well.

Additionally, we validate our POI data to ensure even greater accuracy beyond just scraping third-party websites. To do this we get real-time feedback from our clients using the GapMaps Live platform to confirm whether their stores are still open or closed ensuring the location details we provide are accurate. We also provide insight reports to our customers with our bi-annual retail network reports in each region, which summarise store opening and closure movements for each brand that we track.

Enabling Robust Market Entry Strategies

The availability of GapMaps’ datasets on the AWS Data Exchange is going to be key for brands venturing into new markets. By synthesising these datasets with their internal metrics, organisations can expedite market prioritisation and the identification of ideal store locations.

The Future of Global Data Collaboration

This latest relationship with AWS signifies a thematic shift in global data collaboration. By lowering the barriers to entry for entities in emerging markets, GapMaps and AWS are fostering a climate of innovation that’s rooted in inclusivity and insight.

With accurate, reliable data now at your fingertips, you can confidently enter new markets and make informed decisions on a global scale, and importantly stay ahead of the competition.

To find out more about our GapMaps Data Products, Get in Touch with our team or visit the AWS Data Exchange.