The logistics industry is under increasing pressure thanks to rising costs, a shrinking labor force, and unrealistic customer expectations for priority deliveries. Even Amazon is not immune to these changes. Between 2015 and 2017 the ecommerce retailer’s shipping costs skyrocketed from $11.5 billion to $21.7 billion.

In the age of Amazon, differentiation on quality and service isn’t enough for retailers looking to not only survive but thrive. In order to compete in a narrowing retail landscape, retailers need to start competing with Amazon and other ecommerce giants on convenience as well.

On Friday, October 12th in CARTO’s Brooklyn office we will be hosting our Spatial Data Science Conference 2018. We are partnering again with the University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science to organize an exciting day of keynote addresses and lightning talks from experts and practitioners working with spatial data to solve real world problems.

The story usually goes that brick-and-mortar retail chains were too slow in adapting to changing omnichannel landscape and have struggled to compete with e-commerce retailers.

Just because your marketing strategy has a location component doesn’t mean that it’s Location Intelligent. With all of the data now available, organizations can understand precisely where their customers are, how they move about, and even where they spend their money — a wealth of information that allows geomarketers to create hyperlocal, customized, and competitive campaigns with a broad range of KPIs, especially if they keep the following five priorities in mind.

In today’s competitive market, established grocers are launching or acquiring discount brands to supplement revenue from other brand holdings.

For August’s Map of the Month, we are happy to feature Housing and Spatial Information Specialist Dan Cookson’s recent map of the 1.5 million new homes built in England over the last decade.

We don’t yet know where it will end up, but Amazon HQ2 is going to vastly change the physical, societal, and economic landscape of the chosen site. For the candidate cities, Amazon itself, and other local economic interests, the impact of HQ2 will be significant. But what insights from Amazon’s impact on the city of Seattle, Washington can municipal leaders and other local officials consider to anticipate changes if their city is selected by the e-commerce giant?

Since GPS devices first appeared in cars in 1995, routing technology has been guiding us from Point A to Point B. In addition to its utility at the individual level, this now-ubiquitous technology can provide insights on wider human mobility when collected and aggregated. But how can we use these new derivative data streams in conjunction with spatial data science methodologies to help understand the health of our road networks, make them safer, and more efficient?

Sales territory management is a balancing act. Maintaining equity between salespeople, maximizing profitability, and minimizing costs are important and interconnected factors. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and if the balance is off, sales management is likely to leave someone within their organization unhappy or leave money on the table.