Washington analytics company Inrix has announced IQ Location Analytics, a cloud-based application that provides retailers, investors and other businesses with insights to open new stores and increase revenue and return on investment.

When selecting a new location, businesses need to understand who their customers are, where they came from, how they got there and where they’re going next. Companies that want to build a data-driven business often face challenges, such as the complexity of analysing disparate sources, maintaining quality, and the expertise needed to convert information into valuable insights.

The application combines mobility, demographic, behavioural and location-based datasets in easy to use, on-demand software that helps businesses make smarter, faster decisions. By connecting the dots between people, vehicles, roads, cities and businesses, it provides insights into the movement of people and goods to, from and around locations, delivered in minutes or hours, not days or months.

“For more than a decade, customers have utilised the uniqueness of Inrix data to understand how and where people move, using it as a key ingredient to make informed decisions,” said Bryan Mistele, CEO of Inrix. “Leveraging this same world-class information, Location Analytics allows businesses to confidently and accurately uncover key insights without needing a PhD in data science.”

Whether looking for a new business location or interested in learning about activity for specific businesses, Location Analytics quickly finds relevant points of interest and allows users to compare them easily. Making smart business decisions requires access to the right information. Location Analytics eliminates the guesswork by providing in-depth insights for the locations, evaluating each of their key metrics, and automatically surfacing insights.

Using different platforms for viewing disparate data sets can be time consuming and increases the risk of errors. Location Analytics makes it easy to produce deep, actionable insights. Getting data-driven results isn’t always quick or affordable. Location Analytics is fully hosted and removes the need to manage sources, software and IT infrastructure, turning the focus and resources back to making the business successful.

Location Analytics helps business professionals with access to fresh, accurate mobility data that can be critical to making informed decisions. For example, it helps brick-and-mortar businesses easily search for locations, compare them and select new sites based on customer demographics and behaviour. Financial services companies can analyse business activity at and around individual locations to help inform investment decisions. This application provides answers in a few clicks. The information can also be exported to perform deep-level, custom analysis for use with in-house platforms.

To show the breadth and depth of Location Analytics, Inrix set out to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on retail businesses. Every retail sector was affected with either upward growth or plummeting foot traffic.