Introduction
In the modern data business world, information is essential to ensuring success. This information may regard sales, market, and demographic information. Most businesses have physical locations. This makes GIS spatial analysis important to the businesses, particularly in managing the business and in identifying unexploited markets. GIS enables businesses to make decisions based on their spatial attributes, which leads to better decisions and judgments. A GIS system is a collection of computer software integrated together used to gather and analyze geographical information. This helps in mapping the geographical location of clients, competitors, partners, among others. In addition, GIS can be applied in activities, such as site selection and market analysis. There are countless applications of GIS in business.
Research Question
How can GIS be applied in making business decisions?
Methodology
This system involves the design of a GIS database that will enable businesses to identify the best locations. The system will be suited for the fast-food business in Alexandria. The system will have city boundaries, districts, trading centers, and transportation network layers. The database will have layers of all restaurant branches and locations of potential fast-food consumers. For this database, the administrative boundaries and districts are essential in identifying the locations of the restaurants, customers, cinemas, main roads, and popular commercial areas in the city. The center.shp shows the most popular commercial areas in Alexandria and gives the identifying features. Other layers, such as the hospital.shp layer shows the hospitals in Alexandria. Club.shp shows the popular clubs in the city while cinema.shp will answer the query regarding the best cinemas in the city. Restaurant.shp and hotel.shp will answer queries regarding the popular restaurants and hotels in the city, respectively. The last layer of the database, customer.shp will answer queries regarding the distribution of potential customers in Alexandria.
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The second phase is the data entry, which shows how the database will be developed. The database base will be developed using Arc-GIS software. The software is powerful, efficient, and easy to use, which allows geo-data to be easily accessed through a computer. The software has the ability to visualize and analyze geographical data spatially. The software logs are stored in a single file called project. The software can visualize, analyze, update, and store all geographical data. The system is comprised of various windows applications, such as ArcMap and ArcCatalog. ArcMap acts as the main application and handles all map-based tasks while the main task of ArcCatalog is managing and organizing all the geographic information, such as metadata.
The GIS data will be stored in a Geodatabase, which will organize the data into spatial representation. The data will be stored in tabular form. The entry relationship diagram will be used to create a relationship between the data. After the database design, data will be entered using tools available in Arc-GIS. Information will be input in the database through specifying its category from Point Feature layers, such as hotels, Line Feature Layer, such as major roads, and Polygon Features Layer. The data will then be analyzed using the GIS analysis tools, which shows various data such as location hotels, restaurants, and client distribution.
Findings
After analysis of the data using the GIS system, the system identifies the district in Alexandria, which has the highest concentration of malls, cinemas, and a large number of customers. Business managers can identify regions with many customers. In addition, they can make another query to locate the branches of their hotels or restaurants by selecting locations and restaurants. This allows the business owners to identify unexploited regions that allow them to make informed business decisions.
Conclusion
The main goal of the paper was to design a GIS database used to store and analyze geographical data. This information can be used in business administration by helping business people make informed decisions regarding the market and customers. Using GIS information for making decisions can help businesses exploit geographical data resources effectively, which would prevent them from making subjective decisions. Businesses should invest in designing, such a database, which they can use to make business decisions.
Weaknesses
The paper explores the design of a GIS database that analyzes and analyzes the data, which can be used for making business decisions regarding the market, customers, among others. This system has numerous advantages to businesses, such as identifying unexploited markets. However, the system is based on an analysis of metadata, which may sometimes be misleading. The accuracy and reliability of the system have not been identified, which reduces the trust in the system.
References
Ismael, A., & Bashir, S. M. (2014). Applications of GIS in Business Decision Making: The Case of Egypt. International Journal of Computer Applications, 94 (14), 32-36.
