Unlock the power of your location data with UNL Virtual Private Maps (VPMs)

ByMonika Glory SetiastariApril 4, 2023

Logistics and delivery services have emerged as vital sectors in today’s world, with millions of packages being delivered daily across the globe. In fact, recent statistics, show that the total number of shipments completed worldwide was a staggering 159 billion, and this number continues to rise.

As a result, it has become increasingly vital for location-based companies in ecommerce, last-mile delivery, mobility and more, to have access to reliable and up-to-date geospatial data to make informed decisions, maximize fleet productivity, optimize tour planning, dynamically adjust routes to stay ahead of the competition.

However, the dynamic nature of locations and the constant changes that occur in Point of Interest (POI) and location data makes it challenging for mapping and geospatial data providers to guarantee consistent coverage across various regions.

As a result, companies like Grab, a Southeast Asia ride-hailing and food delivery company, have been heavily investing in building their own map, GrabMaps, to power its services. Other companies besides Grab are also working on developing local maps. For instance, in China, Alibaba’s Gaode and Baidu have created relatively advanced maps, whereas DoorDash, Zomato, and Swiggy have all started the development of their own maps.

And while, more companies are beginning to recognize the importance of creating their own maps and leveraging the power of their own business data into a competitive advantage, doing so is associated with sizable investments, resources, and is often inaccessible to smaller organizations.

To help businesses overcome these challenges, UNL developed Virtual Private Maps (VPMs), democratizing access to maps and quality geospatial data. VPMs are designed to enable businesses to bring their location data (BYOD), without losing ownership and seamlessly consume across UNL search, discovery, geofencing, routing and more location services, and build hyperlocal services and applications.

The competitive power of your business data

Business data can be an instrumental tool for companies, but its potential is often untapped.

Your workforce = your daily source of hyperlocal truth

Capturing and digitizing workforce knowledge can be a particularly valuable differentiator for business performance and service quality.

With millions of deliveries made every day, location-based businesses are generating large quantities of fresh data, such as capturing and validating addresses, point-of-interest (POI) data, changes in road infrastructure, road closures.

Furthermore, POI-specific data like how to locate the entrance and exits, where to park, as well as routes that are not typically shown on traditional maps, including back alleys and narrow side streets that are common in cities across Southeast Asia, can greatly benefit operations and make delivery jobs and planning more efficient.

Activating your consumers for contribution

Maintaining high quality, accuracy, and relevance maps requires diversification not only in the way we capture but also source geospatial insights. Incentivizing users and building an engaged contributor base for continuous improvement and validation of last-meter data together with capabilities to directly embed this data into your business map can infuse an additional level of precision and hyperlocal location intelligence, which traditional solutions lack.

Build powerful applications

When embedded into search, geocoding, route planning, and navigation, rich, real-time, and private business location intelligence can greatly optimize fleet management operations, minimize delivery failures, reduce costs, and enhance overall business efficiency and decision making.

UNL VPMs: Unleash the potential of your location data

With the goal of democratizing the way we create maps, at UNL, we developed Virtual Private Maps (VPMs). VPMs empower companies to take control of their own maps, and provide capabilities for companies to securely bring their own data, including continuous ingratiation of workforce and user-generated insights.

We’ve designed VPMs around the following BYOD principles:

VPMs don’t require development resources to start, making it accessible for companies of any size to create their own private business map and bring their own business data.
Locations are dynamic and your VPMs need to reflect changes dynamically and continuously improve through automation.
Your data is your business IP and remains 100% under your organization’s ownership.
Your data is your business IP and your business should be able to monetize its value.
VPM data accessibility and user permissions are under your business’ control.

VPMs are data-agnostic by design. This allows companies to enhance the power of their own data in combination with third party public and private data sources. VPM data is seamlessly integrated with all UNL Location Services portfolio to radically improve the quality and performance of search, geocoding, tour planning, turn-by-turn navigation and more.

Take control of your maps and tap into the power of your location data. Contact our team and learn how to start with your first VPM today.