Having fun and doing business with Google Products

I recently went on vacation to a remote part of Jamaica and wondered if the location was included in the Google Earth database.  Well it was. I could see all the places I visited and sent links to friends.

This of course was just “a bit of fun”, but I started thinking about business applications.  We can now plan and track the movement of delivery trucks, see where our customer base is located, monitor the changes in demographics and of course plan a vacation using these tools to present information in new ways.

Now comes the next step.  Google Earth Builder is a cloud-based service that allows us make this information available to all users without special software packages.  The data is collected, processed and uploaded to the “cloud” and is available to users everywhere.

Share custom maps, vector drawings, view geospatial data files and more with team members across departments and around the world.  It is simple to keep everyone in the loop because all you need to access this information is a hand-held data device and of course a password.   

Once again, Google products have fundamentally changed the way we use and distribute geographic information.   

Everyday I get requests to tell the story behind pages and pages of data.  To be more precise to help clients understand the information contained in multi-page spreadsheets and reports.  Last week, a client wanted to display the locations of customers in a rural region to effectively schedule service calls.  Next week who knows?  

These are the challenges we get daily and the ones we accept gladly.  The starting point is usually to find out if it should be a pretty picture or a working map.  A picture gives a snap shot of the information, frozen in time.  A working map lets the users see how things change over time.

In either case, the first step is to find a common theme.  The one we most often use is the geographic component or as we often say, location data.  This component can be used to display data in interesting ways taking the user from a two-dimensional table to a three-dimensional view or map.  This map can be used in presentations, in the strategic planning exercise, the deployment of marketing campaigns and much more.

Map used to schedule service calls to customers