Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

billc24,

having only used the GPS technology a few years back when I was selling large scale security systems to protect corportations I think this could be possible. I would recommend you investing some time in google researching it. Most of the people who I know that are using technology to pinpoint specifics like address are doing it through opt in email campaigns. It is very effective but must be done online. GPS seems like it could be done but with a much larger expense base. Organizations like UPS use it but they know who their customers are. I'll have time to look into this later on this evening billc24. Excellent question though especially in a technology laden society. Is there anything else I can do for you? I love making clients happy.

Your Servant,

Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)

Hi Bill

Now that you’ve got Deremiah on your case, regardless of what I write here, I’m unlikely to come up with much that will not duplicate his research on the pinpoint mailing front, but maybe I can help with the technology aspects and possibly save you some time and money in relation to your application.

GPS stands for global positioning system – it’s a set of 25 commercial and military satellites which allows someone with a GPS receiver to calculate exactly where on the planet they are. The signal from a GPS receiver gives a position on the globe in the form of a mapping coordinate – its actually a pair of numbers, very like those you will be familiar with from a map reference. Using co-ordination with GPS ground stations, the accuracy is better than 1 Meter and can be down to 10cm if you have access to military decryption. Using cartography (Map software) with GPS receivers, you can calculate altitude over land as well and of course, pinpoint the position of the receiver visually.

I have a feeling that you may be confusing GPS technology with the underlying cartography which translates a GPS signal into a reference on a map. As the GPS signal is a pair of x , y co-ordinates, it is a relatively simple exercise in software to establish where on a digital map the GPS receiver is located and to represent that position on a map as a dot or cursor. The map software is simply an on screen representation of a lot of digital co-ordinates, all coloured appropriately, so selecting the right one and marking it is actually quite trivial.

Relating the position on a map to a set of addresses, postcodes or zipcodes is just a matter of looking up the x , y coordinate that has been identified via the GPS and finding the postcode from a postcode / map reference database which most closely matches it. The coordinates are in meters in the North / South plane of the map, so finding the closest is a matter of estimation and trigonometry.

Once the postcode has been identified, all postal addresses are contained in a postcode database, so those that match can be displayed on the screen. If the software is given a radius of, say, x + 1000m , y + 1000m then the software will list all addresses matching these criteria – i.e. addresses within a circle of radius 1000m. As the addresses are in a database, again it is a simple task to match those in your own address list database which are within the target circle.

That leaves me wondering why you want GPS for targeted mailings, as presumably most of the prospects you wish to target are stationary and do not possess a GPS receiver which you can access. Even if they were boat owners, their GPS systems will be telling their on-board computer – and perhaps their insurer or security company where they are – not you. The idea of a travelling salesman having an in-car GPS, relaying his position to a company database to report back which customers or prospects live within 1000 meters of his current location seems a bit far fetched-but it is possible to do!

Perhaps rather than GPS you were referring to the cartography software and a database of addresses. As any postcode can be converted into a cartographic map reference, again it is simple to use a software comparison algorithm to calculate how many other locations are within a given radius of the location you have chosen.

This could be used at mapping level, for instance, to list the towns, villages and hamlets within the target circle. If you have access to a database of contacts or companies, it will be possible to access and pinpoint all the names and companies that match the target location. Further matching will reveal which of these exist in your own data and which you do not yet have ownership of – i.e. those ripe for marketing to!

If you now combine the above techniques with a route finding package you can then work “On the road” rather than “As the crow flies” which is very important if you are going to send in a sales team.

You will now be using the following components:

1. A postcode to produce a map co-ordinate
2. A range from the co-ordinates to produce a circle on the map
3. A conversion back to postcodes for comparison with your database and commercially available databases
4. A conversion to addresses for any localities identified
5. The best route to get to the addresses if you want to visit them

The good news is that you can either buy that potential in any large top-end CRM system (Siebel, Onyx, Pivotal, Oracle, ServicePower, PeopleSoft etc). The less than good news is that the purchase (Or ASP rental cost) is vast and the application engineering to make it work as you wish is about 15 time the cost of the software.

Or it can be built by purchasing x y addressable cartography, a postcode database and using your own data (As long as it has a post code) and hanging the data in those 3 tables into a mid range package like Maximizer or SalesLogix and getting an application engineer to write the rules to relate the data in the way you want it.

So, unless I have misunderstood you and you have a highly mobile sales force who always needs to know who they can visit in the next street, you wont find any GPS technology involved at all. Even if you do want to know who you can visit from a given location, it’s probably quicker to phone your position into the office and let them tell you the answer, consulting an on-line map for assistance.

For pinpointing addresses for marketing from the cartography and a database, just follow the steps outlined using the 3 tables of data and you’re there.

We’ve done similar projects to this and they are not trivial – my favourite was to use a database of contaminated land for the needs of a lawyer to produce a report on a property which his client was buying. The original process was very time consuming and labour intensive. Our solution was as follows:

1. Lawyer logs on to our portal and selects the report he wants to buy
2. Lawyer enters the postcode of the property
3. Maximizer reads the postcode and translates it to a map reference
4. Map reference, + 100m interrogates the contaminated land database to return the information found at the map reference
5. Contamination merged into a pre-defined report, including the postcode, address, map and name of solicitor.
6. Report printed for solicitor and billing info posted to accounts and bill printed.
7. Report and bill mailed to solicitor (They can’t accept emails alone) + email confirmation sent at the same time to beat the post.

That lot used to take 15 people a few hours. It now takes 1 person 3 minutes.

Hope this is of use – please contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions