In Depth: DMTI Spatial
Frequent readers of this blog will recall that I recently posted an announcement about DMTI Spatial and the fact that their solution has been selected by First Calgary Financial. But if I wanted to go into much more depth about this company as what they’re doing is truly revolutionary. That led to me having the chance to meet Phil Kazsuba, Vice President & General Manager and I had a very enlightening discussion about DMTI and what they do. First of all, this company isn’t new, they have been around for 15 years. Their core mission is to enable real-time decisioning through the intelligent use of location via Location Economics. More on that in a second.
Who are their clients? Here’s the highlights:
- The five largest personal navigation companies
- The three largest telco companies in Canada
- Canada’s largest banks and insurance companies
- A broad selection of federal and provincial ministries
Simply put, that’s an impressive client list. If I may, I’ll name drop one of their clients: Apple has DMTI supply Canadian postal code data for the iPhone. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Back to their core mission. What DMTI does best is Location Economics. What it means is this:
The leveraging of accurate and deep Location Intelligence by integrating real time analytics and insight into planning, transaction flow, business processes, and partner ecosystems.
Here’s how that can help you. Let’s say that you’re Union Gas who is a DMTI customer. You want to promote an energy conservation program to eligible clients in an effort to reduce natural gas consumption among this group. How do you find the right audience for your message? Do you advertise to everyone, or do you make your best guess?
How about neither.
DMTI allowed Union Gas to visualize existing customer addresses, and cross-reference those addresses with neighbourhood and property characteristics. That allowed Union Gas to identify the right neighbourhoods in which to promote this program. The net result was as follows:
- Uptake rates increased to 4%. and in some areas as high as 8%. This compared to typical response rates of 1%.
- 11.5M m3 of natural gas was saved.
If you want all the details, DMTI has published a case study here.
Here’s another example. The RCMP has a program called the SAFE School Program which creates plans to ensure the safety of students should the worst happen. Given the events of Newtown, that’s not a theoretical possibility anymore. DMTI has done the following for the program:
- Location/GIS Data for SAFE School Program
- Provided analysis and operational support for the protection of 4,800 schools across the country
- The RCMP utilizes DMTI’s location information to deploy emergency personnel, control situation conditions (telecommunication & utilities) in order to safely protect the nations schools.
I should also mention that they also provide support for their National Operations Centre, Major/Organized Crimes Investigations, Mobile Radio and Networking Planning, G8 & G20 Events, and the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
Needless to say, this shows you how good their products are.
The key is the data they have access to. Their solutions are built on top of Canada’s most comprehensive & accurate address database that integrates over 7,300 data sources among other data. Every address is tagged with a permanent, universal Unique Address Identifiers (UAID) providing an efficient mechanism for cross referencing and integrating information. On top of that, they combine industry leading address recognition software with the most current, accurate Canadian location information (compiled at the individual rooftop or parcel level), they can provide an integrated set of real-time location transaction and analytic services.
Now how can you get access to this? Simple, it’s deployed as a cloud based software as a service solution that allows one of their customers to do in days what used to take weeks or months. If that’s not a competitive advantage, I’m not sure what is.
What’s next for DMTI? Make their solutions more accessible to Small Medium Enterprise customers. After all, most jobs are created by this group and it’s a big economic driver for Canada. Besides, why should only the big guys have access to such powerful tools like this?
If you’re a company who needs to make smarter decisions, Location Economics is the way to go. DMTI Spatial is who you go to get the tools to take your business to the next level.
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