Dive Brief:
- Walgreens’ proprietary mapping-analytics technology is generating location-specific data that has enhanced the drug chain’s ability to anticipate everything from consumer demand for a product to expansion opportunities.
- Dubbed WalMap, these interactive maps work with the retailer’s existing geographic information system to reveal near real time, regional data. As a result, the retailer can better spot trends and more precisely inform decisions such as product launches, inventory management strategies, and real estate decisions.
- WalMap also offers a mobile component so that retail associates in the field can tap into this data on an iPad.
Dive Brief:
Like many retailers these days, Walgreens is looking to monetize data analytics via geo-location tools to better serve shopper needs on a local level.
“Understanding our customers — where they live, where they work, why they’re shopping us — is the core of what we do, and that, in many ways, is a spatial question,” Dave Miller, senior director of market planning and research for Walgreens, said in a video on the technology.
Case in point, Walgreens anticipated the regional pattern of a flu breakout before the government’s Centers for Disease Control identified it. By combining data from its flu prescriptions with its mapping applications, the retailer generated a “flu index” that determined where the flu would spread throughout the country a week before the CDC, said Jim Cohn, senior manager of media relations, in the video.
The technology reveals “how important having that spatial lens on our analytics is,” said Jillian Elder, director of enterprise location intelligence for Walgreens, in the video.
