Analysis: GeoAnalytics / Geo Data Analytics

Tableau -

• Overview: Tableau is a large company (over 5000 employees) that helps businesses analyze and visualize data to make better decisions. Designed to make the most of geographical data, so you can get to the “where” as well as the “why,” Tableau enables instant geocoding, and automatically turns the location data and information you already have into rich, interactive maps. There are many sales applications to being able to give your sales analysts and sales operations team access to powerful mapping tools, from analyzing where you should apply more focus and uncovering opportunities, to analysis on how you could serve your customers more effectively, to better understanding your customers and their businesses. 

Tableau enables you to evaluate performance against quota, better understand the impact of changing sales incentives, build dashboards that enable faster and better decisions, account tracking, quarterly results, top accounts, opportunity overview, opportunity tracking, and marketing leads.

• Reference Customers: AMAG Pharmaceuticals (case study here), LinkedIn (case study here), MillerCoors (case study here), 

• Potential Issues: Tableau is a large and well reviewed company. It does a lot of analytics for a lot of applications, but may take some expertise and work to get used to it. It is among the most powerful analytics tools available. 

• Demo: demo of mapping capabilities here. 3rd party demo here. Full youtube channel here 

• Published price: here 

eSpatial -

• Overview:  eSpatial is cloud-based mapping software built for businesses to enable fast, easy, and powerful mapping. Users can easily upload, visualize, and analyze multiple layers of data in an intuitive geographic environment. Business data can be accessed whether it is stored in spreadsheets, CRM or ERP systems. In addition, eSpatial also has capabilities that belong in the Territory Building and Design Category, but since they are a more general tool not just focused on territory building, we included them in this category. eSpatial has solid reviews.  

• Reference Customers: Thermo Fisher (case study here), LivaNova (case study here), The Kafafian Group (case study here), Henkel (case study here), NAS (case study here), Starkey (case study here), Engel & Volkers (case study here), Seco (case study here), All case studies available here. 

• Potential Issues: In general, eSpatial is positively reviewed and basically across the board, the feedback is that it is a great choice for your GeoAnalytics. It's noted in the reviews that this is not built with frontline sales reps in mind, but instead built for Sales Leaders and the Rev Ops team, Marketers, and other Analysts that need to work with geographic data. We think that is generally true of everything in this category. This review was a particularly important story for companies rebuilding or rebalancing their territories. Although it doesn’t necessarily say anything bad about eSpatial, its lessons are relevant about this whole category, as well as the Territory Building and Design Category. 

Also important to note that this is not a mobile product, but focused on desktop use. 

• Demo: Full Demo here. Full youtube channel here

• Published price: here

Geopointe -

• Overview: Geopointe location-enables Salesforce to help you geographically visualize and manage your accounts, contacts, opportunities, and CRM data. Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Service teams can improve efficiency and streamline processes using features such as geographic analysis, routing and scheduling, territory optimization and management, and more. Geopointe can help provide actionable insights about your geographic data to make better decisions. 

Geopointe can improve Marketing strategy by taking into account density of good target markets and then enabling more targeted marketing for trade shows, email blasts, and traditional mail campaigns. This can also be helpful for Marketing departments that are holding events for fundraising or outreach, enabling Event Planners to customize their messaging based on geographic location. Also helps decide the best places to hold an event with heat mapping capabilities.

GeoPointe can also help paint the Big Picture for Executives by taking the data from salesforce and visualizing it, making it readily accessible for meetings and strategic planning sessions. 

Geopointe has basic capabilities for territory design and rebalancing, and also some basic capabilities in the Sales Mapping App (both B2B and B2C) categories, and also in the Trucking and Fleet Management category. We put them in the GeoAnalytics section because that is the primary focus, and the apps in the other categories are only focused on those other areas. But it's important to note that they do have some capability here too, although if you have a more than basic problem you want solved in any of these other areas you are probably better off going to the App that specializes in that particular area. It's unclear if this is a case of marketing creep, or if they purposely tried to be broader as opposed to specializing, or if they were so threatened by Tableau in the GeoAnalytics space that they started to go in different directions. The good news for a buyer in this space is that you can get Geopointe for your Marketing team or Analysts, get a specialized fleet management solution for the people managing your trucking assets, and a Sales Mapping App for your sales team, and get a Territory Building Solution for your Sales Operations team.   

• Reference Customers:  Rational AG (case study here), Trader Interactive (case study here), 3M (case study here), Quincy Compressor (case study here), Paycor (case study here), ClassPass (case study here), DenMat (case study here), Doctolib (case study here), HFO Investment Real Estate (case study here), ISN (case study here), Shoptech (case study here), all references here.

• Potential Issues: There have been some complaints about speed and usability of the application, but other people have reviewed it very positively. There are some complaints about the additional charges for their optional add on features and the way their pricing is laid out, so make sure you understand that the functionality you need is included in your quote. Geopointe is also not a standalone mobile application, but works within Salesforce’s mobile app. So there are no ratings on the apple or Google play stores. This is for use on the desktop in the browser, and is delivered as a SaaS solution. 

Some of their marketing is a little confusing because they talk about being for mobile teams like field service and field sales teams, but given that they don’t have a mobile app, they are likely referring to the analysis and management of those teams as opposed to the end users on those teams. We suspect this is marketing creep more than anything else, as when you look at their site they basically say that they are in every category in this analysis, but they are a small company. In addition to GeoAnalytics, they say they do territory building and alignment, Routing for Delivery drivers, Sales Mapping and territory management (both for B2B and B2C). However, this shouldn’t reflect poorly on what the product actually does, as GeoPointe is well reviewed for its GeoAnalytics capabilities. We suspect that Salesforce has put them under a lot of pressure over the last few years as GeoPointe only works on Salesforce, and Salesforce bought Tableau for $15.7B in 2019. With this level of investment and the Marketing and buzz around it, Salesforce has probably sucked a lot of the air out of the room for GeoPointe. But it's worth including GeoPointe on your shortlist of companies in this category to try out, because they may be able to solve your GeoAnalytics problems with a lot more simplicity and at a lower cost than Tableau.

• Demo: Full demo here. Full youtube channel here.

• Published price: Here

Maplytics by Inogic -

• Overview: Maplytics does geographic analytics and visualizations to bring business value. While GeoPointe is focused on the Salesforce CRM ecosystem, Maplytics is focused on bringing mapping to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem whether you have an online, on-premise, or partner-hosted deployment. Maplytics has capabilities like geocoding, mapping your CRM data, radius search, auto-scheduling, finding nearby places, route optimization, geo-analytics and dashboards to better understand your data, and heat mapping. With Maplytics, your Marketing team can better target their ad spend with personalization and localization. 

• Reference Customers:  Trefor Infrastruktur (case study here), Performance Brokerage Services (case study here), T-GREX (case study here), Data Sciences International (case study here), Strong Spas (case study here), Vert Bleu (case study here), all customers stories here

• Potential Issues: While Inogic has 77 employees, Maplytics is a small part of what they do. It's unclear how well this has been resourced, and there are very few reviews of the product from customers. But if you have Microsoft Dynamics 365 for your CRM, this is certainly worth doing a trial to check out to see if it would fit your GeoAnalytics needs. 

• Demo: here. Full YouTube video here

• Published price: Not published.

(Sales Mapping Buyers Guide)