New research by World Wide Worx (WWW) shows digital mapping services are a key "secret weapon" in South African business and a key emergent trend in local IT.
The Digital Mapping in SA 2013 survey was conducted by WWW with the backing of digital mapping provider mapIT, and included telephonic interviews with 400 small and medium enterprise (SME) decision-makers and 111 corporate IT decision-makers.
According to the survey, 76% of local corporations and 38% of SMEs are spending more than 2% of their IT budgets on mapping services.
"The same proportion of SMEs spend more than R50 000 a year on digital mapping, while 79% of corporates have higher budgets - 22% of corporates spend more than R500 000 on digital mapping every year," says WWW MD Arthur Goldstuck.
Goldstuck says that while for consumers digital mapping is essentially about getting directions, for businesses that is only the beginning.
The most common uses of digital mapping services among businesses include asset tracking (such as fleet management), vehicle tracking and recovery and navigation. The standout reasons for adoptions among both SMEs and corporates are security, efficiency and productivity.
The survey also found location-based marketing is growing significantly. Forty-one percent of corporations are using location-based marketing, with a further 15% intending to do so in 2013. A third of SMEs are also already making use of such services, while another 19% also plan to do so in 2013.
"We will see the saturation of the use of location-based marketing among local businesses in the coming years," notes Goldstuck.
"SMEs usually lag behind corporations by several years when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. For SMEs to invest in new technologies, the business case has to be very clear.
"For example, when ADSL prices first started coming down, between 2003-2009 we saw a perfect 'X' of the fall of dial-up and the rise of ADSL. For almost any other form of technology, SMEs lag behind in terms of adoption. But here we see they are taking up location-based marketing at the same pace as corporate - it's just one of those rare technologies."
According to Goldstuck, another key finding was the extent to which budgets are growing for digital mapping services. "Two-thirds of large corporations and SMEs alike - 69% and 66%, respectively - intend to increase their spending on digital mapping services in 2013."
According to the survey, the biggest barrier to adoption of these services among SMEs is a lack of knowledge about the tools, while for corporations there were no significant obstacles.
MapIT MD Etienne Louw says: "Digital mapping is proving to be the hidden secret weapon of South African business. The research underlines the extent to which large and small businesses alike depend on digital maps, not only for navigation and tracking, but also for efficiency, productivity and security."
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