Pitney Bowes Location Meets Big Data = Location Analytics

Pitney Bowes data and software solutions today announced a major expansion of their solutions, adding location to Big Data to perform location analytics, to give organizations a better understanding of their customers. The announcement is three-pronged: Big Data Module for the flagship solution Spectrum, Addressing and GeoEnrichment Data Portfolio and Conform Solution Suite.

As a result of the huge amount of data generated via mobile devices, social media, sensors, and transactions, Gartner forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. This sets the stage for the need for powerful location tools for both business and government going forward.

Big Data Module for Spectrum

The expansion highlights an update to Pitney Bowes flagship solution Spectrum, a new Big Data module which incorporates address, location and customer data information to create a single view of a customer; unique customized data sets that organizations can deploy to supplement existing investments in business intelligence (BI) infrastructure that are now embedded directly into the SDK. The Big Data module provides the ability to validate and cleanse customer and location-based data natively within Apache Hadoop and Spark, before applying analytics. Clients benefit from the combination of market-leading address validation, GeoEnrichment and analysis to get more value from structured and unstructured data. For example, organizations can use these location-based insights to gain a 360-degree view of property to streamline the mortgage process, and property and casualty underwriting; offer coverage mapping for real-time mobile networks; and understand customers, merchants and ATM locations.

“Customers’ experience with Big Data frameworks brought them to ask us for this type of solution,” said Joe Francica, managing director, Geospatial Industry Solutions, Digital Commerce Solutions at Pitney Bowes. “Every implementation is different and some clients run on 10-50 nodes, it depends on the architecture they want.”

In working with insurance companies at the time of this writing, Pitney Bowes is processing a lot of data extrapolated to Florida; providing homes with records and developing risk profiles. Geocoding is used for attribution and GeoEnrichment. Big Data includes attributes such as property value, roof composition, wall composition etc. on the software side.

According to company materials, Pitney Bowes has partnered with several of the largest Big Data software providers, including Cloudera and Hortonworks, and certified its data quality and advanced geospatial capabilities on both Cloudera Enterprise and Hortonworks Data Platform to help bring their solution to market. In addition, the software provider has joined with Hortonworks Partnerworks in the Modern Data Solutions (MDS) partner program. These partnerships will enable clients that have invested in Big Data frameworks to add Pitney Bowes data quality and location capabilities to their data lakes and business processes.

Addressing and GeoEnrichment Data Portfolio

Pitney Bowes has spun off a new business called the Addressing and GeoEnrichment Data Portfolio that will include industry-specific data sets that organizations can easily deploy to gain a better understanding of their customers through Pitney-Bowes’ delivered flat files, or it can be done through Apache Hadoop or Spark.

On the data side, Pitney Bowes is releasing data sets based on their master location data. “180+ million U.S. addresses are appended on the data portfolio to that address fabric,” said Francica. “Customers don’t have to go through geocoding.”

To expedite the process of using these GeoEnrichment data sets, a quick search process using a Pitney Bowes proprietary and unique ID called pbKey, can be used. “It helps us retain some information about property, even if it is split, and/or changes ownership, because of its unique ID,” said Francica. “There are over 200 associated attributes appended to the pre-build data sets. This is on the data side of the business, with 24 pre-built data sets for insurance and real estate markets, with more data sets to be released later.”

Property information such as area demographics, proximity to hazards, availability of services make it possible for clients to create a more detailed record of their customers in relationship to their physical location.

Confirm Solution Suite

With U.S. infrastructure receiving a D+ rating from the American Society of Civil Engineers, state and local governments are pressed to find a way to replace or repair failing infrastructure while keep costs down and resources used efficiently.

The Pitney Bowes solution expansion includes the U.S. debut of the cloud-based Confirm solution suite, a popular infrastructure management solution that has an underlying GIS solution.

“The suite has 118 clients in the UK and is used by hundreds of government agencies supporting 45 percent of road infrastructure management there, as well as supporting more than 140 million citizens worldwide,” said Francica. “Confirm has 30+ modules and is a true solution for DOTs.”

Confirm will be offered to U.S. based public and private sector organizations, as an end-to-end integrated platform for managing asset data across all phases of the lifecycle, from current conditions records management to maintenance and future investment planning.

All legislative mandates for state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) require validations of value of their roads with a GIS specification process. MAP-21 creates funding for infrastructure and is now required to give a value to roads to procure funding. As an IoT-integrated and location-based solution, Confirm includes a reporting mechanism, SaaS solution, supports workforce mobility and legislative compliance such as MAP-21 and FAST.  A global community of product users  Li360 Collaboration Community gives clients access to support for “time-to-value and product innovation.”

From company materials: 

• Retail: Retailers are facing a fundamental shift in consumer behavior with technology adoptions and the “Amazon Effect,” which set expectations for a seamless shopping experience. The Spectrum Big Data module helps retailers leverage Pitney Bowes Points of Interest Data, combined with customer location information, to deliver more targeted marketing and push notifications to customers when they’re within a specific boundary.
• Insurance: A property insurance provider was able to accurately assess risk and market the right coverage to a new homeowner by using GeoEnrichment data products. The provider layers data file information around property value, HVAC life, recent property assessments and an additional 200 attributes to ensure that not only the homeowner was protected, but so too was the provider.
• Telecommunications: A mobile telecom builds smarter geofences in proximity to public points of interest by spatially-enriching 12 Million customer data records with 150 Million parcels boundaries and 10 Million building footprints. Initial efforts using the Spectrum Big Data module completed the process in 7 days, but once the process was ported into Hadoop, the entire process was completed in 36 minutes.
• Financial Services: RCG Global Services, a Systems Integrator based in New Jersey, is working with Pitney Bowes to help financial institutions implement Pitney Bowes Data Quality and Spatial Analytic software for a number of use cases. Solutions offered through the partnership enable institutions to append existing customer and merchant data with location intelligence and demographics to deliver targeted services, improve anti-money laundering and fraud detection, and generate greater preference for their products.
• Real Estate: Many real estate firms are small, local companies. Unlike their nationwide competitors, these firms don’t have the funds or technology to build applications that offer property comparisons. However, these firms are now using the GeoEnrichment data products to offer a comprehensive view of a property and how properties compare to others in the surrounding area and neighborhood.
• Public Sector:Cities around the world are focused on becoming more intelligent and more sustainable, and The City of Sydney is no exception. With the help of a mobile-first Corporate Asset Management System (CAMS), based on Pitney Bowes Confirm, The City of Sydney is able to better manage the lifecycle of infrastructure assets worth AU$12.7 billion. Through this asset data management process, The City of Sydney can better comply with legislative mandates and promote a vision for a green, global and connected future. 

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^[i] Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says 8.4 Billion Connected “Things” Will Be in Use in 2017, Up 31 Percent From 2016, February 7, 2017

Tags: cloud, ESRI, geospatial, GIS, Google Maps, imagery, indoor mapping, Infrastructure, intelligence, LiDAR, location, mapping, maps, smartphones

Categories: Big Data, cloud network analytics, data, drones, Esri, geocoding, geospatial, GIS, image-delivery software, indoor location technology, LBS, lidar, location based sensor fusion, location based services, location intelligence, MapInfo, mapping, mobile, Pitney Bowes, Pitney Bowes Business Insight, sensors, transportation, UAV

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