Chapter 6 • Managerial Support Systems 231dependencies. Federated Department Stores, Inc., (Macy’s
and Bloomingdale’s) provides an example: Beginning in
the late 1990s, Federated used a GIS for simple map
production and analysis. Dozens of proprietary, industry,
and public data sources including internal sales informa-
tion were underutilized because of the difficulty of linking
them. The capabilities languished until a team of five
analysts identified an integrated GIS as a key organizational
tool. The resulting system came together just in time to
support a major business initiative to find sites for a new
type of small store in existing markets. Federated’s GIS
allowed comparison between potential and actual perform-
ance in hundreds of existing markets; mapping the data
clearly showed untapped potential and supported market
development (Esri, 2003).
It is hard to find an industry or government agency
that does not have spatial analysis needs. Health care,
transportation, telecommunications, homeland security, law
enforcement, natural resources, utilities, real estate,
banking, and media all need to locate people or assets, or
both, in space and to predict their behavior. For example, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) use GISs
to analyze and understand public health problems ranging
from rates of chronic illness such as heart disease to identifi-
cation of the sources of infectious disease outbreaks—and
then use these associations between data and geography to
help make public health decisions (CDC, 2007).
What’s Behind Geographic Technologies
Two approaches to representing spatial data are widely
used: the raster approach and the vector approach. Both
types of data are commonly managed in a data model that
stores related data in layers known as coverages or themes.
Raster-based GISsrely on dividing space into small,
equal-sized cells arranged in a grid. In a GIS, these cells
(rasters) can take on a range of values and are aware of their
location relative to other cells. Like pixels on a television or
computer screen, the size of the cells relative to the features in
the landscape determines the resolution of the data. Satellite
imagery and other remote sensing applications exploit the
ability of the raster approach to identify patterns across large
areas. Although this approach offers continuous data, objects
of interest must be inferred or extracted from the rasters,
making the precision of the original data collection crucial.
Raster approaches have dominated applications in
natural resources. Analysis of raster data using statistical
techniques and mathematical models allows meteorolo-
gists to distinguish rain from snow, foresters to identify
diseased areas within a forest, and farmers to more precisely
apply herbicide to their fields. The Nature Conservancy
compares handheld “ground truth” data collected with
GPS devices to raster-based remote sensing data to aid in
early detection and monitoring of invasive plants in the
Hells Canyon region of Idaho and Oregon (Karl, 2007).Monkeytown Swings with GIS
Today, you don’t have to be giant or global to use a GIS. Monkeytown, Inc., a small office supply
company with a funky name and an owner who refers to himself as the “Top Banana,” describes itself
as the “Wildest office supply company in the world.” Monkeytown, which serves Waterloo, Cedar
Rapids, and about 110 smaller communities in eastern Iowa, runs five delivery routes (each covering a
50-mile radius) and makes an average of 200 deliveries per day. Can geographic technologies keep
Monkeytown ahead of local and national competitors?
Monkeytown chose Esri’s ArcLogistics Route software. The software defines routes overnight for
tomorrow’s orders; in the morning, Monkeytown’s drivers load their trucks by delivery sequence.
Provided with invoices, delivery directions, and timing, drivers are less likely to speed and total drive time
has been reduced by about 7 percent.
“ArcLogistics Route has redefined how our business processes work,” says Kurt Karr, the “Top
Banana” of Monkeytown. “We are more efficient than ever.” Fuel use has decreased by over 4 percent,
labor hours are down 18 percent, and the company retains its adaptability, high service level, and
customer-centric focus. In the case of severe weather—such as a snowstorm—which prevents deliveries,
Monkeytown’s GIS can easily reroute the next day’s deliveries to include the delayed deliveries and meet
its customers’ expectations. Karr adds, “We use ArcLogistics Route for much more than just routing of
deliveries. ArcLogistics allows us to use dynamic routing, changing the configuration of each day’s
deliveries to best match the resources available. We also use it to route sales calls so we can optimize the
sales work we do. I think it’s a great tool and I can’t imagine operating this business without it.”
[Based on Esri, 2006; Esri, 2010; and Karr, 2010]