Some seriously cool things are being built on our data

One of the best parts of my job is that I have a lot of client meetings.

Some are early conversations with a few slides and an ambitious idea. Others involve products already running at serious scale. And increasingly, I find myself leaving these meetings thinking: Wow, this is clever. I know what our data can do, but I love seeing people find new ways to apply it.

I'm not going to name names here. Some of these products are live, some are being built, and some are simply ideas being explored. A few might never happen at all. That's part of building new things.

But innovation creates more innovation when ideas are shared. So rather than presenting these as customer case studies, I thought I'd share some of the ideas I'm seeing and, more importantly, how our data could be used to build them.

Travel guidance that helps when things go wrong

Imagine a crisis where large numbers of people or vehicles suddenly need to get somewhere safely and quickly, to get in or out of somewhere.

This is where our data could be used to help a system understand how roads and populations are actually moving, and combine that intelligence with travel guidance to direct traffic and people toward the right locations.

Ways can provide intelligence about how roads are being used, while Areas can help understand population movement around them.

Travel guidance + location intelligence + emergency response.

This could save lives. Which is precisely why I like it.

Connecting what happens outside the store with what happens inside

Retailers have become very good at measuring what happens once somebody enters a store: traffic, conversion, dwell time, transactions and operational performance.

But the customer journey doesn't begin at the front door.

Our Places intelligence could be combined with in-store data to connect what's happening in the surrounding market with what happens once customers walk inside. Suddenly you can start connecting market potential, visitation and customer behavior with actual store performance.

Instead of just knowing what happened, retailers get closer to understanding why.

Building a global operating system for retail

Now take that thinking beyond an individual store.

Our data could become one input into a global product helping retailers optimize operations across hundreds or thousands of locations, combining location intelligence with sales, inventory, staffing and other operational data.

I particularly like this kind of use case because the customer isn't really "using Pine59."

Their product is using Pine59.

That's exactly what APIs should enable.

Putting emergency services where they're actually needed

Where should an ambulance be waiting?

The answer changes depending on where people are, how they move, what time it is and what's happening around them.

This is another area where our data could be useful. Areas and Ways can provide intelligence about population movement and mobility patterns, which could become one input into models determining where emergency resources should be positioned.

Instead of relying only on static assumptions, planners could add another signal based on how places and populations actually behave.

That's a pretty good use of data.

Making national statistics better

This one sounds less dramatic than crisis guidance and ambulances.

It might actually have the biggest impact.

Aggregated mobility data can be used as another signal for understanding how populations move and change, potentially complementing more traditional sources used to produce official national statistics.

This is particularly interesting because our approach is based on Aggregated Location Intelligence rather than giving customers access to individual device-level location data.

National statistical organizations could use this kind of intelligence to understand the physical world with greater frequency and detail.

Better statistics can lead to better decisions. Better decisions eventually affect almost everyone.

Not bad for an API call.

And these are just five ideas

What I find interesting about all of this is that we didn't invent these ideas.

Our customers and partners did.

Some will become products. Some won't. Others will evolve into something completely different along the way.

That's the fun part.

Pine59 provides Aggregated Location Intelligence about Places, Areas and Ways. We make it available through our products, Console and APIs, but the really interesting part starts when someone combines it with something we haven't thought of.

Your transaction data. Your sensors. Your models. Your AI. Your software. Your industry knowledge. Your slightly crazy idea that somebody initially told you wouldn't work.

That's when data stops being a dataset and becomes a product.

So consider this an invitation.

Connect to our APIs. Take the data. Combine it with something interesting. Build something we haven't thought of.

Then please show it to me.

Those are my favorite meetings.

Let's build!