GIS-based Market Analysis and Sales Management System : The Case of a Telecommunication Company

A Geographic Information System(GIS) is a system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages and presents data with reference to geographic location data. In the later 1990s and earlier 2000s it was limitedly used in government sectors such as public utility management, urban planning, landscape architecture, and environmental contamination control. However, a growing number of open-source packages running on a range of operating systems enabled many private enterprises to explore the concept of viewing GIS-based sales and customer data over their own computer monitors. K telecommunication company has dominated the Korean telecommunication market by providing diverse services, such as high-speed internet, PSTN(Public Switched Telephone Network), VOLP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), and IPTV(Internet Protocol Television). Even though the telecommunication market in Korea is huge, the competition between major services providers is growing more fierce than ever before. Service providers struggled to acquire as many new customers as possible, attempted to cross sell more products to their regular customers, and made more efforts on retaining the best customers by offering unprecedented benefits. Most service providers including K telecommunication company tried to adopt the concept of customer relationship management(CRM), and analyze customer's demographic and transactional data statistically in order to understand their customer's behavior. However, managing customer information has still remained at the basic level, and the quality and the quantity of customer data were not enough not only to understand the customers but also to design a strategy for marketing and sales. For example, the currently used 3,074 legal regional divisions, which are originally defined by the government, were too broad to calculate sub-regional customer's service subscription and cancellation ratio. Additional external data such as house size, house price, and household demographics are also needed to measure sales potential. Furthermore, making tables and reports were time consuming and they were insufficient to make a clear judgment about the market situation. In 2009, this company needed a dramatic shift in the way marketing and sales activities, and finally developed a dedicated GIS_based market analysis and sales management system. This system made huge improvement in the efficiency with which the company was able to manage and organize all customer and sales related information, and access to those information easily and visually. After the GIS information system was developed, and applied to marketing and sales activities at the corporate level, the company was reported to increase sales and market share substantially. This was due to the fact that by analyzing past market and sales initiatives, creating sales potential, and targeting key markets, the system could make suggestions and enable the company to focus its resources on the demographics most likely to respond to the promotion. This paper reviews subjective and unclear marketing and sales activities that K telecommunication company operated, and introduces the whole process of developing the GIS information system. The process consists of the following 5 modules : (1) Customer profile cleansing and standardization, (2) Internal/External DB enrichment, (3) Segmentation of 3,074 legal regions into 46,590 sub_regions called blocks, (4) GIS data mart design, and (5) GIS system construction. The objective of this case study is to emphasize the need of GIS system and how it works in the private enterprises by reviewing the development process of the K company's market analysis and sales management system. We hope that this paper suggest valuable guideline to companies that consider introducing or constructing a GIS information system.

시장분석 및 영업관리 역량 강화를 위한 통신사의 GIS 적용 사례

시설물이나 토지, 도로, 방재 등 다방면에서 GIS의 효과성이 입증됨에 따라 최근 들어 상권이나 고객, 영업 관리 등에 GIS를 도입하여 시장분석 및 영업관리 역량을 강화하려는 민간 기업들이 증가하고 있다. 본 사례 연구에서는 날로 치열해지고 있는 통신시장의 경쟁환경 속에서 K사가 정교한 상권 및 고객 분석 역량을 확보하기 위해 GIS 영업정보 시스템을 구축 한 전 과정과 영업현장에서의 시스템 활용방안 등을 살펴보았다. 전사적으로 시스템을 오픈한 후 지사들로부터의 반응은 담당 관할구역에 대한 경쟁상황 파악 및 일/월 추세조회가 용이해 졌고, 왜곡되지 않은 실제 데이터를 제공받아 제한된 시간 내에 정확한 타겟 고객 선정이 가능해졌으며, 동별 시설분포와 같은 시설물 관련정보를 영업활동에 활용할 수 있어 매우 효과적이었다는 등이 주를 이루었다. 이와 같은 과정과 결과를 정리함으로써 향후 GIS 영업정보시스템 구축을 고려하고 있는 타 조직이나 기업들에게 의미 있는 가이드라인을 제시할 수 있기를 기대한다.