Thanks, Jeff. Geocoding and reverse geocoding use cases do present privacy challenges. That said, the ability to aggregate and anonymize results with location context provides ample protection from disclosure of Personally Identifiable information (PII) in many of these cases. For a bricks and mortar retailer, understanding location at a zip code level of positional accuracy (i.e. which zip codes are most prominently represented among those who enter a particular store location) can be useful to marketing use cases, but to determine whether a market is underserved, and whether a new store location would substantially cannibalize existing store traffic requires a much more precise geocode of customer points of origin. Better yet, is some of that traffic based upon the daytime location of that consumer (i.e. work address) as opposed to a home address?
Results can be aggregated and anonymized while still requiring the most precise geocode possible in order to provide informed insights. Thus, bringing the developers, IT, and business stakeholders together is really critical in elevating the importance of positional accuracy to the use case. The same department may have 3-4 use cases for location intelligence, and even if only one requires high-confidence positional accuracy, that may warrant the additional investment (of course, this is ROI dependent). This same use case can apply to an e-Commerce retailer who is looking to complement their online success by introducing a bricks-and-mortar channel.
Frank Rizzo
Pitney Bowes Software
Atlanta, GA
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Frank Rizzo
PITNEY BOWES SOFTWARE, INC
Shelton CT
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