FAQs

From time to time we get asked questions about Geo Strategies: who we are, what we do, where we come from, and things like that.  This web site goes a long way to answer such questions but, just in case you are wondering . . .

Who owns Geo Strategies?

Geo Strategies Ltd is a privately owned company registered in Cambridge UK. There is a separate company called Geo Strategies SA in Sibiu, Romania which is the main conduit to the Romanian market place for part of our group’s products and services.

What are your main activities?

Historically, we were predominantly a data house. We now have three main streams of activities:

  • Data quality management
  • Consumer & spatial analytics
  • Value-added mapping and databases
  • Digital maps at street level
  • GIS software and consultancy

Do you produce data for specific applications as well as off-the-shelf data?

Most certainly! We have now been creating data for 18 years and have a substantial stock of standard data which is always being kept up-to-date. So, it is quite common for customers to require data which can be created from some combination of existing datasets. However, on occasions, it is also necessary to create completely new, fully attributed datasets.

What data formats do you support?

Being a data supplier, it is a prerequisite that we support all standard formats.

How frequently is the data updated?

This depends. Terrain data is seldom updated as this tends not to change.  However, certain general mapping sets are updated on a quarterly basis. Socio-demographics are subject to an annual update cycle.

It is most important for our customers to licence our products together with maintenance to benefit from updates across the complete product suite.

How does your demographic data compare with what we can get from general, official statistics?

In few words: granularity, diversity, relevance and fit-for-purpose. Our socio-demographic data is supplied as attributes to Mosaic codes which are related to the Romanian postcode system (~37,500 postcodes)

This means that our data is available for street segments varying from 60 households in Bucharest to 200 households in other cities.  This discrimination provides a valuable basis for targeting the right product(s) to the right customer.

How can you claim to segment the population to higher granularity than available from the official statistics?

Our segmentation process (fully described elsewhere) is based on three components:

  • The census (36%)
  • Geographic data – e.g. how far is it to the local Bank / Modern Retail outlet / ATM / Hospital / school / etc. – (40%)
  • Financial indicators – e.g. building types, tax code, car type, property value (24%)

So, although census information is only available at a somewhat coarse level, geographic data and e.g. property information is available at much more detailed levels of geography. By combining and modelling these datasets it is possible to reliably segment the population at more granular levels than those general available from ‘official’ channels.

There is significant skill applied in the process – especially as countries have different data infrastructures in both breadth and depth. Our analysis and modelling processes are driven by most reputed mathematicians, statisticians and economists with demonstrated methodologies used in a further 28 countries worldwide.

Why should we bother to cleanse and standardise our address database(s)?

SMARTaddress is based on a database of approximately four times as many street names as published officially. These are maintained both with and without diacritics. So it is possible to ‘clean’ large address databases i.e. to check the spellings and ensure that up-to-date street names are being used. Furthermore, correct and up-to-date postcodes can be applied and the resulting address can be geocoded if required.

Thus, cleansing your database has three potential advantages:

  • You have the confidence that all address components have been spell-checked and are fully up-to-date (e.g. with street name changes).
  • If you work in the financial sector, you have the confidence that you are legally compliant (Basel II / Solvency II).
  • You can identify the geographic coordinates of all addresses for spatial analysis of your data.

Why would we want to geocode the records in our address database?

It is often said that ‘over 80% of data contains location information’. So, simply knowing the county is enough to define a location to within approximately ± 50 km. However, by geocoding to address level – to the street number of the building concerned – the location is defined to ~ 10 metres. This information is useful for all manner of purposes, ranging from parcel delivery services, through insurance assessment for flooding, for cell-phone signal prediction, for directing the emergency services, for disease control and, indeed, any application for which it is useful to be able to plot the position on a map.