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STI: A GIS Industry Innovator
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Every industry has its technologically revolutionary milestones. Business
use of GIS is no exception. One of these turning points occurred with the
release of STI: Vortex VDB. This introduction marked the first time businesses
had desktop access to powerful GIS data. With this point-and-click GIS software
technology, businesses now had immediate access to all available market data,
formerly accessible only by gigantic conglomerates such as utilities and
transportation companies. What's more, with
Vortex VDB on their desktops, executives now had access to more than just
numbers. They had instant visual explanations of the data in the form of
highly accurate, professional-looking maps and reports, which put all the
numbers into perspective. This gave business executives the exact information
they needed for on-demand decision-making. It also gave them the competitive
edge in the increasingly competitive retail marketplace, where terms like
"erosion by cannibalization" and "chaotic customer
movement" dominate strategic planning meetings.
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GIS for Business: Historical Developments
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To fully appreciate this GIS breakthrough in the business world, you must
first understand the way site selection and market optimization had been
done historically. Prior to 1991, GIS was not widely available for retail
business use. Only a few companies had created expensive in-house systems.
Others purchased data in pre-structured formats from service bureaus.
The rest guessed. Then in 1991, the U.S. Census Bureau released the street
and block group boundary files of each county, called the TIGER
Files. These files contained both data and graphics, and they became the
infrastructure for the entire business-oriented GIS community. Suddenly,
in-house GIS was within the economic reach of many businesses. For example,
before the TIGER files, the street files for one medium-sized city would cost
anywhere from $25,000 and $50,000. Today those files would cost about $500.
Their availability and affordability meant business executives could now
economically use sophisticated geographic and demographic
analysis to target new units, analyze competition, strategize growth plans,
and understand their businesses better. Now, the only GIS glitch in today's
need-it-now business environment was that the data required months of
interpretation by large GIS staffs to create useful maps, reports, and charts.
In early 1992, STI – also a user of this data – decided there had to be
a better way to access geographic information. STI's team of interface
designers and developers explored ways to combine data mapping and layout,
and harness the power of GIS with user-friendly graphical user interface
software. Their goal was to develop a tool that created accurate, useful,
and professional maps, reports, and charts on any market at the click-of-a-button.
The highly skilled staff, with years of experience in
research and
analysis for retail entities, developed Vortex VDB. Then the team proceeded
to create a wide variety of logical, realistic, easy-to-use tools and data
products to address the specific market research issues facing expanding
businesses. They soon took GIS data far beyond the traditional tabular
data previously available. It was the first time an affordable GIS system
was developed for business users and not for engineers. This customer-focused
approach has allowed market-oriented businesses in
industries such as restaurant, retail, and grocery to maximize their success
stories and to yield a higher return on their market investments.
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STI Bucks GIS Industry Traditions
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Innovation can take two forms: the truly new and a new way of doing an old thing.
STI products fall into both categories. One hallmark of each STI software
development was that each product was created to meet a specific customer-driven
market research need. This strategy assured that each and every tool and
data product would truly help retail businesses make better business decisions
faster. Among the many STI innovations are:
- STI: Analysis allows users to design trade areas that truly match their marketing demographics
- STI: Reports gives businesses click-of-a-button access to professionally-designed maps, reports, and charts
- STI: Signatures allows businesses to equate their customer profile with a unit's success or failure
- STI: Market Index allows businesses to locate ideal customers with maximum precision
- STI: Impact determines the impact of a new unit on existing stores' sales
- STI: Hex Grids accurately allocates data geographically
- STI: Markets provides the maximum level of market data and market size, fully integrated and organized
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Bringing GIS to Business in the 21st Century
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These products are just the beginning of STI's GIS innovations. It's team of
GIS specialists are continuing to develop tools and data products to meet the
specific needs of business executives, for today – and tomorrow. The business
use of GIS is still a developing industry, and competition in the marketplace
can only get more fierce. This will require location-oriented businesses to
have increasingly more immediate and useful access to market data. STI plans
to be at the forefront of the
growing GIS industry, by continuing to deliver customer-oriented tools and data
products that address businesses' on-demand market analysis and reporting requirements.
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When Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI), first began operations in 1992, its
singular focus was providing retail business executives with new, highly
innovative software tools and data products to access powerful geographic
information systems (GIS). Today, powered by an intimate knowledge of its
customers' needs and a systematic approach to performance excellence, STI
offers a diverse line of GIS tools specifically for the business world.
STI strives to enable its clients to manage their GIS needs
in-house, so they can achieve the highest degree of accessibility, consistency,
and accuracy in their market research requirements. At the heart of STI's
aggressive strategy is the conviction that innovations are not a goal – they
are an imperative to helping companies optimize their growth objectives.
