Most state-of-the-art digital applications and business models in logistics, retail, transportation, navigation, healthcare, real estate, and other industries depend on location data, as every strategic business decision is based on this type of data. These decisions can be related to any business activity, such as expansion, promotions, competition analysis, etc. These are precisely the most common applications for POI data.
What are the points of interest? What are some typical applications for it? And how to create and update POI databases and keep them up to date continuously?
This article will answer all these questions and provide possible benefits of POIs for your business. So, let’s get started.
What Is POI (Point of Interest)?
A point of interest (POI for short) is a specific location or a point on a map that someone may find helpful or interesting. It can be anything from ordinary places like ATMs, gas stations, and malls to car parking, hotels, speed cameras, restaurants, churches, or historic buildings. POIs can also be classified as permanent, e.g., a building or a city, and temporary (in such cases, certain events may act like points of interest).
How are POIs defined? Basically, they are defined by geographical coordinates. Some additional attributes also can be used, for example, address, name, contact details, working hours, etc. These attributes can benefit your business as they allow reaching a deeper level of location information in your custom location-based application.
Typical Applications of POI Databases
The range of purposes people and businesses leverage POI data is extensive. Smartphone users rely on POIs to find and navigate services of interest in a particular location. At the same time, enterprises deliver their service right at a point and extract sales-provoking insights and analytics, allowing them to make proper decisions. Let’s examine some typical applications of POIs in various industries.
Insurance & Financial Services
Businesses in the insurance industry often use POI databases to assess risk. Based on the proximity of threats such as flood zones and wildfires, they mitigate risk and decide which property can be insured for better prices in specific locations.
Financial institutions like banks can manage and assess their branches’ performance based on location. Besides, the POI databases can help investigate fraudulent behavior and alert about “red flag” transactions.
Telecom
Location is paramount in the telecom business. Telecommunication companies can plan expansion in specific areas and study the coverage needs using POI databases. They can perform planning, mapping, and improvements across a city or the whole region.
Logistics and Transportation
Route optimization, precise navigation, operations improvement, and saving time and costs are just several examples of benefits of POI databases for businesses in logistics on a surface. Fleet and freight companies, postal services, and e-commerce companies use points of interest integrated with their corporate systems and applications in their everyday decision-making process.
Retail
With POI databases, retailers and retail analytics agencies use metadata such as the category (NAICS code) and foot traffic (visitor counts) to power trade area analysis and site selection. Also, they can get complete lists of their stores’ locations.
Real Estate
POI databases greatly help choose more beneficial construction areas for investment. On top of that, points of interest databases can provide valuable insights about the local area and amenities for customers, as buying, selling, and renting a property is all about “location intelligence.”
Government & Public Sector
Local authorities and governments can assess the community’s needs for services optimization in the area and urban development planning. POI data reveals insights about regional facilities and public infrastructure such as healthcare, public transportation, etc.
Location-Based Marketing
Advertising businesses leverage point-of-interest data for geofencing to reach relevant audiences with location-based targeted messages. This data helps to gain behavioral insights, build audience profiles and segments, and deliver personalized ads to users near a point of interest.
Wrapping up point of interest data brings endless opportunities to enrich decision-making and geospatial analytics in multiple domains. But how to find or create those POI databases? Let’s find out below.
How to Find Point of Interest Data?
So how do you find the point of interest data? Data providers acquire it from a variety of sources, including:
- government directories,
- web sources (e.g., Google Maps),
- user-generated location data,
- manual verification.
Each of the sources mentioned above provides POI data. However, it varies in terms of attributes, freshness, and accuracy.
Let’s take a closer look at these methods and their drawbacks.
- Government directories. Some governments gather commercial location information in POI databases and make them available for all. A fundamental limitation here lies in the inaccuracy over time, as the emphasis in such databases is on businesses to keep their details up to date.
- Website sources. Website sources like OpenStreet Map or Google Maps are maybe the easiest way of attaining POI data. One can use a web scraping tool to extract location information to a file or a database; however, there are several concerns here. If some services allow web scrapping, others tend to ban such data extraction. So, as a rule, this method is rather time-consuming, and the freshness of data isn’t always sufficient.
- User-generated data. The amounts of location data and content generated by the user grow exponentially with the rising popularity of social media platforms. Just by checking in at a particular location, a user pins an area that can be added to a POI database. Many organizations collect this data or buy it from providers who gather it. Again, this data relies only on the user and their device settings, so high accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
- Manual verification. Many data providers verify their data manually on the ground with a custom smartphone application. With the help of this method, one can create a more accurate data set than user-generated data or other automated processes. POIs are constantly refreshed, verified, and kept up to date.
Let’s say you don’t want to collect this data internally and need a constantly updated and verified POI database. Then a reliable POI data provider is a perfect match for you.
Reliable Point of Interest Data Provider for Business
Intetics helps businesses to create and update Points of Interest databases and knows how to keep them up to date continuously. The expert teams can solve a wide range of tasks from POI data collection, verification, enrichment, polygons processing, and entrance determinations to application content search (landmarks and different POIs descriptions, photos), to name a few. The figure below shows the steps to create a POI database for your specific needs.
By working with the trusted POI data provider, you have a chance to get the following benefits:
- Unique approach. The efforts of distributed teams turn into a cost-efficient solution to your data processing challenge. The team delivers high-precision data for your software solution with thousands of services and custom verification approaches.
- Unique data collection technology. Your process setup, team formation, and staff management efforts are covered by Intetics entirely. You are free from these challenges and get high quality for your needs.
- Time efficiency. Leveraging the time zone difference gives the remote team an advantage over the in-house team. We are working around the time zones and using deadlines as an asset rather than the gap.
- And more.
Data Processing Approach
Here are the three key features of an efficient data processing approach custom-tailored to your needs:
- Internet Research. POI data collection through open web sources. Research specialists manually analyze available data and validate its relevance and accuracy.
- Call Verification. The collected and initial data get verified through phone calls. It allows us to obtain accurate information without any physical team relocation.
- Nearby Field Agent Engagement. Visiting locations personally, they do the live-check of hard-to-get-to POIs to ensure the accuracy of your data. Follow the link for more about the Point of Interest Data solution.
Bottom Line
Data is a significant investment to the company, especially regarding location data. Location impacts business in every industry. That’s why organizations have to ensure that they invest in data of the highest quality and accuracy. The best way to get such data is through an experienced and trustworthy point of interest data provider. Let’s talk and find out how POI databases can enhance your business.
