Google Maps: Optimizing Routing, Delivery & Pickup

all right so it's you know almost 201 now eastern time and we'll get started with today's presentation so thank you very much and we appreciate you for joining us we are here for the google maps platform optimizing pickup and delivery webinar we'll be focusing specifically on brand new solution sets within google maps platform and within that realm we'll be showing off some examples of how these new solutions can hopefully drum up some ideas that can relate to our audience members today so next slide please and just to let you know we do hold a number of webinars here at appgio with a wide range of topics so i do encourage you to go over to fdo.com and you can sign up for any webinars that are upcoming as well as our access as well as access our webinar recordings library in our learning center without any uh further ado i guess i'll introduce our host today so first we have tim garcia our google maps rep for today tim has over 16 years of experience in mapping intelligence and as you can see uh tim's focused on scaling gmp directly to customers in the commercial sector so joined by tim for the webinar and the q a um is that geo sales rep aaron doucet as noted here aaron is an experienced gi gis analyst with a web cartography focused and is dedicated to community adoption of geospatial tools for solving real world problems which uh you'll see some example of today so aaron would you like to take it from here sure thing thanks jordan and i'd like to start off with just a brief introduction to who we are at appgio you know appgio was founded to provide location-based solutions so that both companies and government clients can operate with greater efficiency deliver improved services and make better decisions so it's a fitting topic today that we're talking about improving delivery services with your improved services and you know looking at our company as a profile we like solving problems with the best technology available and that's partly why we're partnered with google here and have been so since 2014 you know we have a partner specialization in location based services and over 30 google maps and cloud certifications within the company so we really do like being that trusted advisor role for our clients and we do all things geospatial from data projects application development systems integration geoanalytics the list goes on and you're going to learn about some of that today so we've been doing this for uh 30 years now we're excited to keep going and with that i want to walk you through what we're looking at today so we've had our introductions in a moment here i'm going to hand it over to our esteemed guest tim garcia with google to talk about the big picture changes happening across a variety of industries and then i'm going to walk you through some of the top strategies that appgio has put together to improve your approach to pick up and delivery and more and we'll wrap up by taking a look at how you can get started implementing these types of things right away so with that i'd like to start by passing the mic over to tim he's worked with some of the biggest names out there and i think that you'll all find his insights are going to be really valuable when it comes to putting perspective on the concepts that we're looking at today so tim do you want to kick it off yeah thank you aaron and the appgio team for the warm welcome and having for having me here um as jordan aaron mentioned my name is tim garcia i'm based out of the east coast and i lead the efforts for enter for uh enterprise to leverage google maps platforms from a b2b perspective and really focus on making sure our customers are really enabled to give their end customers and consumers the best possible experience with location intelligence so as you know we're living in a world that has been extremely disrupted in so many ways over the last year and because of that disruption there has been opportunity to not only recognize that because customers journey is shifting but us as businesses need to innovate to really surface our locations our products and services and really enable a customer experience that makes life easier for our customers so based on some external research we found out that sixty percent of consumers have changed their shopping habits and eighty percent intend to adopt new shopping behaviors post pandemic so now that we've made it this far in the in the environment that we're in today with covid and seeing some light at the end of the tunnel we know that consumers are expecting businesses to adapt especially the ones that are already established you know it's really unfortunate that for some retailers including like big box chains restaurants and merchants couldn't really weather the storm we're feeling that pain locally and it's hitting us pretty hard but for those businesses that have adapted or the new businesses that are opening recently and i can think of a couple of my own town today they're taking new technologies very seriously and those technologies can come in the form of payment options to curbside pickup predicting arrival times on-demand delivery even knowing the business hours of a location or a store or merchant which was really very static in nature for the longest time because business hours didn't really change that often but now it's more dynamic and even more essential than it ever has been so with that said we can go to the next slide what we found out is based on some internal and external research three drivers as to why you know businesses are really adapting to consumer behaviors and essentially to drive consumer drive customers back to their locations and really enhance the user journey of research shopping purchasing of goods and services and adapting to the new consumer needs so the three drivers so the first is convenience right is my store open is it nearby is it convenient convenient for me to do the research up front and 46 of shoppers search for product and service availability in a store before making a purchase decision and the second is value do i find value with a product or service and is that directly related to my time spent searching for details on that location or a location so 74 of consumers search for store specific details and that could be you know locations that are nearby the directions the hours the in-stock products prior to their visit and then third is the availability of a product or service at a specific location so 53 of consumers are interested in allowing brands to use their location to improve the checkout experiences and enable you know in-store pickup or delivery for that consumer which has seen an exponential growth during this time with all these findings and what we know and really what we have always known is that location plays a major role in making sure that the customer has an amazing experience the evolution of location intelligence and applications has been pretty phenomenal over the years and i've been in in this industry for about 16 years and each year gets more and more compelling but the pandemic has really heightened the importance of location really to the nth degree and for instance when you're looking at google maps from a consumer perspective on your phone on your desktop you're seeing a breadth and depth of location intelligence close to a billion active users across the world and that experience really needs to be transferred directly to the enterprise use case because that's what consumers want and they want it they want it from the retailers and the merchants and the restaurants that they frequent often and now before i pass it on to our our steamed uh partner appgio and back to aaron that the company that really enables solutions leveraging location intelligence using our google maps apis for retailers merchants even for finserv fintech and many many other verticals i wanted to quickly point out a bcg boston consulting group report that was released in february and we're really talking and this report really underlines and talks about the location how location unlocks value and that's exactly what appgio does as well i would highly recommend to request this paper from appgio to get more insights because essentially vcg surveyed 500 executives in financial services retail logistics and delivery real estate travel and it really reveals the way geospatial data has changed in the way that that we and they do business so feel free to reach out to aaron to jordan and their team and we can share that findings with you so with that said i'll pass it back to aaron and let you talk and let aaron talk about the strategies for really optimizing delivery and pick up services with their solutions thank you thanks tim i really appreciate you sharing those insights to their audience today uh definitely do check out that bcg study as i think it shines the light on why it's so important to have those spatial capabilities in place especially in this post-pandemic world that we are entering i'm crossing my fingers on that one but we are almost there you know and from here i want to take a look at five areas which we at appgio have thought about for a long time you know even before all this um new normal stuff started and we're gonna walk you through some of the things that you can start implementing right now that will really up your game in the delivery and pickup department and even more so moving on to number one and that is making it easy to find your locations now this sounds trivial but in a world where people tend to follow the path of least resistance having an easy to find and navigate web presence when it comes to your mapping tools is incredibly important so when i ask here are you on the map chances are yes but so is everybody else and they have you know tens of millions of businesses on google and we want yours to stand out be the one that people go to now furthermore people are expecting to be able to do more right from the map or the website or their phone you know click book buy no fussing around and that's the sort of experience that customers are now beginning to expect as the default so we're going to dive in a little bit more on how to achieve this and i'm going to look at each of these in a little bit more detail but we're going to begin at the top here starting with a user location so most people these days they've got their phone on them all the time i know i do so that means they've got a gps in their pocket all the time and this wasn't the case you know five ten years ago but it really is now so when you're initiating that user experience of finding convenient locations for them to visit you can put them at the center of the map and give them that personalized experience that's going to be so much appreciated versus having to start from scratch and zoom in from the whole country down right now here's another way of doing this using auto complete with autocomplete we can prioritize a user's location even without gps to show them the most relevant search results first and that means when we start filling in our address we're typing it in we're getting you know in my case the benny street here in cambridge massachusetts and not one that's off in kansas you know we prioritized that starting location and we've sped the whole process up and made it more likely to convert that traffic to a sale or a paying customer now let's keep going down this list next is taking advantage of the new store locator features that google has rolled out a few updates in this area the one i really like personally and i think is really powerful is this new map styling so for the first time in recent years what you can make your map do is stand out from the rest of the pack have it fit your brand identity and start tailoring what are appearing on it so like let's look at what that looks like on the left you can see what many of you are going to be familiar with and that's that classic google map but if you look close we also see a few extra things on here like some landmarks some other stores there's even a climbing gym it must know it's me because i've been there a couple times now maybe we want to draw all the attention to our own locations and leave that other stuff up you know in cartography we learn that part of what makes a good map is what is not there not just what we add so that's all in addition to bringing in our own colors and unique look so here on the right you know it might not seem like a big deal but when you're creating that on brand experience it's really going to look amazing on your website so on the right hand side we have everything nicely cleaned up we just got the neighborhood names there we got our stores there we've got our custom styling and this is something the app geo can help you get up and running because we have a bunch of people that love making maps so here you go now moving on the last couple i want to get to real quick here uh doing more from the map and that's having your customers start scheduling in-store interactions or booking appointments or even shopping right from the map and as tim mentioned having those things like up-to-date hours is going to be more important than ever as we're starting that long-awaited reopening process and lastly think about tying your inventory data right into your map interface so customers could say filter by what stores have the product that they want that would be really great so again making that store level inventory data visible to customers and scheduling those store specific appointments uh really important features and we're seeing more and more businesses do this now again thinking about making it easy to find nearby locations we've compiled a list of some of the apis you're going to need to make this happen along with that custom styling feature i mentioned so we encourage you to reach out to us if you need help on any of these and we have a lot of map experts here who love playing around with this stuff you know including me so that wraps up number one making it easy to find nearby locations we're going to move on to number two and that's offering buy online pickup in store now some of you might already be doing this for your business but there are some new features on google maps that might help you make it even better buy online pickup in store was by far the fastest growing area for e-commerce even before covet 19. we have some stats here that it was growing at five times the speed of overall ecommerce that's pretty crazy so to meet these changing consumer habits we need to ramp up technology that we have in our business infrastructure now furthermore i want you to consider the statement above and that's that ninety percent of shoppers surveyed say that high shipping fees and home delivery that takes longer than two days remember that will likely prevent them from completing a purchase online so the benchmark has been set people it's no surprise that online sales have grown you know year over year for what the past 20 years um but i believe the tables have started to turn again in favor of local where not only are people looking to do more when it comes to shopping locally you know that's a big thing right now but you have a unique value proposition in terms of being able to beat that two-day time window by offering the convenience of online shopping with maybe same-day pickup in that town um you know i can't think of anything better than going on my phone ordering something and having it ready for me 20 minutes later uh and free by the way so the good news you can do better you can suddenly compete uh with those uh other businesses event uh taken share for years uh the tables have started to turn i think so looking at ways that you can up your game when it comes to this pickup concept uh number one is making checking out easy and fast you know there's things like google checkout which are a real uh game changer in that department but sometimes you need people to fill out their information for the first time and with autocomplete your customers don't have to get all annoyed filling out a million different boxes on the site and then their billing address where you got to enter it a second time so with autocomplete all that's going to be maybe a few key strokes to get all the information and you get the added reassurance that you have accurate data coming into your database not a bunch of spelling mistakes or you know the zip codes with missing digits the next one on this list is providing a quick and easy way for customers to verify they know what location to pick up from and with static maps from google you can embed a low-cost map right onto the customer's email receipt where they need to come and pick up their purchase which is really helpful if you say have multiple locations in the same town or region you know imagine the annoyance someone would have if they drive all the way there and they're like what are you talking about we don't have any order for you that's going to frustrate the heck out of them so having that extra layer of verification putting a picture right on there of your store that they're going to be coming to we think is a great idea and a great use of these apis um and then lastly you know making that store level inventory data visible is really important so the apis that you're going to need to make this happen autocomplete is definitely big static maps we've talked about and then directions as we've seen some implementations where you can even get an estimate of how far away your customers are from your store that's going to help you prioritize in your packing department or getting those orders processed for pickup you know know who's two hours away and who's 15 minutes down the road that's going to help you improve your processes by even knowing when the customer will get there now moving on to number three and that is keep the customer satisfied it's not just a 1969 paul simon b side it is a way of life um and i've added an extra thing in here your driver is satisfied because as your employers employees you know they are part of your company and part of that experience for the customer so how can we ensure both accurate and on time delivery you know those are the two things i think matter most in this day and age get your stuff to the right house get the right package and have it be at the time they're expecting it so we've made a list here for you and number one is minimizing delivery errors there are a few great ways we can do that within google um starting with having the right address to begin with and that's going to be our you know geocoding our placement of pins on the map is far none but also some cool stuff like providing real-time tracking you know that's a bit of a more advanced feature but if you have a fleet of vehicles with gps there's ways to show the customer exactly when that delivery is driving down their street and i think that is pretty cool um now the other thing that is really powerful when it comes to routing with google maps is taking advantage of all that live traffic data you know google has one of the most powerful engines for knowing you know where streets are closed where there's traffic backups where there's delays of anyone in the world because they have so many users on the google maps consumer platform driving around with it in their cars collecting that real-time data and we're going to talk about that in a little bit and lastly giving your drivers a heads up with street view for drop off points we've heard a lot of really interesting examples of this being implemented where they can visualize exactly you know the right porch that they're dropping off on ahead of time that's going to speed up time in the field uh not only get them to the next delivery quicker but avoid having to circle around the block and search for the right house for 20 minutes pretty powerful stuff now appgio is no stranger to these type of solutions as over the past year we've developed two products in this exact routing and delivery space and i want to talk you through them really quick to give you a sense of what can be achieved on this platform as well as where google strengths have brought us to use their technology for some of this development so today you're going to be seeing examples of bring food which we made freely available for non-profits who are responding to food insecurity across the country during this covid pandemic and also root nice which is a brand new application rolling out it's a powerful commercial grade routing application for home delivery and that's going to be for everybody else so what we're looking at here is bring food and again this is the free version that we developed to help out those local non-profit organizations we start with a bunch of delivery locations and these could change every single day and with google geocoder we go from a spreadsheet of addresses to a view like this one in seconds where we have pins on the map so from there our organizations are able to generate routes and we're able to generate the best route for a given number of drivers to reach them all in the most efficient amount of time so you can see here on the right hand side we have routes one through seven that would be like seven different drivers we're able to track things like the miles and the estimated time for each of them to do some load balancing if necessary and really get a sense of what we're asking of each of these individuals and we have all sorts of controls we can go in and look at each of the stops and make sure everything's right but the reality of the situation is here we're able to go from that you know spreadsheet of addresses maybe collected from a google form or from our list of customers and go to something you know actionable like this like the exact route that someone's going to be driving in a very short amount of time and going one step further looking at one of those routes in detail we see their five stops it's all very clear and they're able to take advantage of google maps routing in the car on their phone for example to hit all those uh five drop-off points turn by turn it's a great combination of technology so where do we go from there you know bring food has been helping organizations really save time and speed up deliveries across the country largely working with a volunteer set of drivers that's really important to get the most number of people in the least amount of time but for a commercial application i want to introduce to you this application root and eyes which we're rolling out very soon and there is a beta program that we are now going to be signing people up for so i'd be interested if any of you are curious about that get in touch with us we'll be offering a trial of the platform free of charge if um you're willing to participate in some user feedback check-ins and maybe be part of one of these webinars in the future so looking at root nice again it's a even more advanced version of what you saw from bring food there's going to be a google interface in there for people to familiarize themselves with the route and we also have some mobile components for that as well and we're targeting to release this in q2 of this year so stay tuned we're very excited about root nice and you on this call are some of the very first to hear about it so in summary for this third category we're looking at the relevant apis being geocoding directions street view and then a couple more this distance matrix and asset tracking and for those in particular i've highlighted as they're a little more complicated to implement and we'd love you to get in touch with us if you want some help so without further ado moving on to number four and that is simplifying your dispatch processes now for some of you what you're delivering is even more complex than your traditional deliveries in some cases we might be picking up and dropping off people or perhaps running a larger fleet and have a lot of b2b delivery type needs with tight timetables or a lot of information to keep track of and in those cases where you're working from a dashboard type interface or want to be there's some benefits here i'd like to quickly run through as well so how can we make sense of all this and make our operations more efficient so first and foremost one thing we can improve and monitor is safety and that's a big one because we want to keep your employees safe out there so you know being able to not only choose the best route and manage changing conditions needs but monitor things like vehicle performance and furthermore we can track this performance to provide better estimates you know when it comes to miles traveled and delivery and driving around time is money and also time is gas and with all the data google has on roads if there's some inefficiency in your uh routes that slow down your operations you might very well be able to identify it and correct it and lastly having all your data in one place is so important and whoever is running your dispatching or fleet management operations is really going to appreciate having access to all that information in one place without having to go on tons of different websites and tabs to get added all and for that i'd like to show you an example of another application the appgio developed on google technology where we were able to do this kind of dispatching dashboard now this for the company in question used to be an entirely manual process back in the day and after two years of app geo managing the product uh we've really transformed that legacy system where they're now all online and they can in this case they're doing student busing in the state of new york they're able to have these very specific pick-up times drop-off times manage tons of different schools have profiles for each of their uh different customers or in this case students that they're picking up and manage all that from a web interface um and you can see here what a little bit of what that looks like in action we've linked up their database of even like contact information phone numbers to all these different end destinations we're able to create these custom routes using our set of data our personal data and in this case they have over 11 000 passengers over 2 000 vehicles so just to give you a sense of the scale that we're able to manage very efficiently here within google maps um also adding things like search functionality select records and do all this in bulk it's really sped up this group's time on the planning department so again when you're looking at dispatching that maps javascript api is the center of your command console really relevant uh the roads api where we're able to actually take vehicle paths traveled and match them up with specific road database information that's really cool also on the google maps platform and of course this one keeps coming up again and again that roots api which has your directions and distance matrix but also place a search because if you're dropping off at other businesses how nice is it to be able to use google place database to identify exactly the correct address for all sorts of businesses across the us so moving on to our final tip and this goes a little bit deeper and if you see the icon there in the lower right hand corner you might have a hint of where this is going what if i'm looking for even more insights into my data or if i have a lot of data and if you're looking for both location and cloud services there's really no better combination than google maps and google cloud so how do these two technologies fit together well the good news is if you're a customer of one you have access to everything on the other and we help a lot of customers do just that so the google cloud platform provides an extensive range of products for high performance infrastructure scalable storage and even machine learning and what google maps platform provides is customer access to google's data and content you know that address data that business data that routing and traffic data and all the maps and being able to combine that with all the powerful tools that are in google cloud and this is a mantra that we've been applying in some of our work this predict prepare and protect i thought this can also apply to your data because in some cases your data is one of your most valuable assets and being able to quickly compute and analyze and make decisions with large sets of data you know that's something that never was achievable for before for so many businesses just because they didn't have the scale and maybe people on staff to do it but with google cloud it becomes a lot easier and you're tapping into google's infrastructure to do it so not only can you overlay and visualize you know that proprietary data to uncover these new relationships um as a partner who specializes in geographic information we're here to help you make sense of those geographic relationships you know it's what we love doing and another feature here that i'd like to bring up is something called google bigquery where we can detect patterns in your data and make predictions based on those patterns you know bigquery removes the need for customers to manage their own data and their own data infrastructure and bigquery gis enables customers to analyze and visualize geospatial data without the need for that database administration part and it also has some built-in machine learning capabilities which is very futuristic so giving you an example of an application that appgio has built within this kind of google cloud and google maps ecosystem it's something called drive texas and this manages the highway uh information system for the entire state of texas and they've had some pretty um devastating storms there even in the past month and this is a system that you know residents across the entire state of texas are relying on to get that up-to-date information on the um hundreds of thousands or millions of miles of roadway that are tracked within this system so when you combine google cloud with google maps you have this unprecedented level of scalability and reliability where this application has not crashed when it gets millions of hits during hurricanes these most recent ice storms it stays online because it's mission critical and so are the apps that you're developing for your business so we're really proud of our drive texas implementation as an example of where we've built something really bulletproof and we're happy to do the same for you and that's what takes me to our last portion of today the solutions built on google maps are within reach and we can help you in three different ways getting you set up as a new customer uh consulting that's something we call spatial iq and then lastly through our application development services so if you want to get started it's really easy we can help you set up your billing account we can get your project off the ground by letting you configure the apis that you really need to get the job done and we can get you provisioned with those api keys and actually get them set up securely for your website today but we're all about helping you do more with your data and that is where spatial iq comes in this is our technical support and services program specifically made for google maps and it helps you you know dive deeper and get more value out of everything we discussed whether you're a first time adopter trying to get started or maybe you are a power user agency looking to optimize and roll out your next big project you know this is just one example of a journey for a spatial iq customer where we kick start your project we consult we review we're there in the long term um we want you to consider this if you want to bring in you know that geospatial angle into your projects and then lastly this is more of a hands-off approach but we can develop your whole application for you you know we start by scoping it out understanding what your objectives and outcomes are and based on the information we can generate you know a custom quote for you and actually develop and deploy those applications in the cloud and of course provide that ongoing support so consider all these options this is ways that appgio can help you and from there i'd like to bring the team back for our q a session and keep the questions coming we have plenty of time to get to all of them alrighty i'll just give it a second for those questions to start filtering in um and it does look like i have the first questions on our host panel here do i need to go through a google maps partner so anyone can get on and get started with these apis but working with a partner has a couple key advantages you know one we're able to help and guide you through these processes which um you know for a lot of businesses it's not stuff that they're intuitively familiar with because they might not be coming from that geospatial background but the other option that perhaps is even more relevant for a lot of our customers is we're going to be able to offer you more billing options and more flexible billing through our enterprise console and we're also going to be able to give you access to some of those volume discounts if you qualify for them that are going to save you money if you're a real power user um i'm sure tim can tell you all sorts of ways that partners have uh really come to the aid of a number of customers you know we're we're here around the clock um monitoring what your usage is keeping an eye on things to make sure there's no runaway trains um but again those are just a couple other reasons tim do you have any other areas where you think partners um are a good idea yeah i think it's more of uh what is the velocity of getting something done quickly and going deeper into it right for solutioning something that a customer wants so if it's turnkey and just if the customer is very agile and able to use a set of apis then they can go for it but if it's more of a solution bringing it to the market you know partners come in really handy absolutely so do get in touch with us if you'd like to learn more about everything that we can offer as a premier partner um you know it's a relatively small club of us out there and uh you'd be in good hands without geo thanks all right so i do have another question um i am interested in the ability to brand my maps and store locator can you talk more about how much customization is possible there absolutely and i'll even bring up a quick view of that for you so we can look in a little more detail you can see on the screen here we're looking at one of those examples of a custom map and with these new cloud styling features uh not only can we change the look and feel of the map in terms of colors and you know branding but we also have more control than ever to adjust what other icons and points of interest are showing up on the map and that's really crucial if say you're trying to you know draw attention to your business you can hide your other competitors and that's something you can only do if you do these custom implementations additionally um there's all sorts of very interesting controls you can add such as you know maybe you have a lot of customers who come to your business on public transportation or trains if you're in a city you can have it show i want to show all the train stops nearby and my businesses right like pick those combinations of points of interest that make most sense for you um and that really again gives that custom experience what makes sense versus just relying on the default which is really meant to work for everybody um so hopefully that answers your question and again we're happy to uh go deep down that rabbit hole we also have a whole webinar on this topic that we took on last year with uh katie from google so uh something that i personally love talking about as you can tell awesome um so i i will move on to another one real quick um unless you want to do tim you have anything to add to that real quick no gary cover that really well so awesome so um what other industries that you know maybe maybe don't i'm assuming that this question is um leaning towards that industries that traditionally don't do pick up and delivery um are these tools applicable for i mean i think absolutely we focused on this pickup and delivery concept as it's extremely relevant in our current world where more people are looking for these services but so much of what i talked about when it comes to doing more from the map you know there's gonna be things that we always have to go in uh in person to do so if i'm gonna be like booking a haircut for example which i think i should do soon um you know i'm gonna be going in for that but i can speed up the process by finding the location on the map know how to say drive or walk there and maybe even getting a time slot rather than having to you know wait inside for um 45 minutes for them to be ready and you know that really expands out to all sorts of other services like um i know tim works heavily in the banking and finance world you know if you're going to be having a meeting with a loan officer or maybe being applying for a mortgage those are often going to be those in-person conversations and being able to find the services and book them from your phone or desktop we see that as becoming totally the norm and i'm sure tim's seen some examples of that too yeah exactly and then if you talk a little bit more about fintech and other verticals i mean fencer understanding where transactions are happening for that consumer and then that consumer can actually understand uh the context of their transaction and have it kind of reconciled with their list of transactions that they have from like banking statements so it makes that consumer experience even better and that directly ties into retailers because if i buy something and i want to check on if that was actually the location i bought it the retailer is usually affected because the retailer might get a customer call and saying hey i don't know if i bought something here or this could be an error or something or the bank uh do the investigation so it's kind of all tied together and verticals definitely merge uh quite a bit absolutely and at abgio we are no strangers to our government customers you know with our bread and butter for many years so we have all sorts of ways that you know state and local government can implement these tools as well for those municipal services and actually i think that rolls in nicely to the next question here um you know how could this be used in the rollout of the vaccine so yeah interesting and you know it's funny you bring that one up as we have actually been in a couple conversations with a couple states around the country to do just this using google maps as the backbone but when you think about something that you know the vaccine my parents just got it a couple weeks ago thankfully and you know it's i from everything i've heard especially as we're starting with our older population it's an incredibly stressful process to like book that appointment and um let's make it a little easier to find a location nearby i hope more coming online soon and how to get there like if we can alleviate just a couple elements that cause you know stress and anxiety for people we're gonna help that widespread adoption that is so important um but again especially for cities where there could be a dozen different sites um to get a vaccination and you know all sorts of things in the future like even a flu shot i see that as a really powerful tool um i think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities around this especially as we move toward you know getting more of the population uh vaccinated so you know really timely question and uh one that i hope uh both commercial and municipal uh folks are thinking about right now great already and um so i think i'll move on to the next one and i'm assuming the answer to this question is going to be yes i'll just say that right away but um is my data secure in the cloud maybe you could expand a little bit more on how data is secure on the google cloud yeah and you know i'll kick that one off um when it comes to security it's really one of the top priorities for everyone and with google cloud in particular you're getting access to all of the investment that google has made in security which is extremely advanced i'm sure tim could go on for that for a long time display a lot of people that's their entire job is thinking about you know those security questions um in the context of location uh we hear about this a lot and it's becoming more and more of a you know an open question people's mind is my location data secure what is being tracked about me are there um a need to start putting tin foil around my cell phone right and the answer um that i like to give is that um ultimately the user has control over this experience and what is being shared um you know nothing's being sent without your permission and you know that's why you get that little pop-up every time you're gonna autofill that information like this site would like to know your location there's always the option to say no and i'm sure tim can expand on that a little bit more yeah i'm going to take it more from the b2b side of things so when we work with customers from a google maps perspective we keep it to the customer's own data right we're providing output to their input so they're asking what is the location of this where is this place how do i auto complete a form how do i understand geocoding in the in the address to a lat long or lat long-term address so we're providing the geo context with an api stream we're not saying we're not taking consumers data from the customer because that data is theirs to use and leverage right they're not we're not touching it we're saying customer mr mrs customer you don't send that data to us that's for you to own um we're just providing the output from a query that goes into an api absolutely and you know at appgio we've worked with a lot of sensitive data in the past and have quite a lot of best practices in mind when it comes to protecting uh both privacy and data security and you know we firmly believe having that information in a cloud environment is always going to be more secure than on your own infrastructure which um truth be told might not have as much hardening on the outside so um you know the security stuff goes uh beyond uh my realm of experience but we have quite a few people within the company who you know that's their primary focus great thank you um i will move on to the next question and don't hesitate to ask anymore as well we will stay here for um as many questions that do come in um what steps are being taken for google to reduce the geocoding error rate interesting um and i don't work for google myself so i'm not going to speak too deeply on that but i can tell you in my experience in testing the bring food application you know we wanted to make sure that users were going to have a good experience there and that relies heavily on geocoding and often it relies on user input addresses as well you know people who are setting up for these um food services and one of the interesting things our team came across was you know feeding addresses that maybe have a non-standard convention and still getting a good output and what do i mean by that like something like um you know apartment 2b and then the address right um or you know those prefixes and suffixes which can drive anyone crazy and what we found over time was you know a lot of those errors actually come from exactly how that input data is being uh formatted how it's being sent to the server and we have some tricks in our sleeve to help better parse that input data to ensure that the geocoder is going to give you a desirable and accurate result so again if you have large batches of geocoding that you're hoping to do this in the appgio can you know help consult on we do it all the time with a variety of tools but we do feel really strongly that google geocoding works really well especially for commercial and residential applications and of course you have the entire team over at google maps working to improve what locations are in that database all the time so hopefully that helps answer your question we don't have uh your name here but feel free to reach out after the presentation if you want to go more in depth on that and tim anything to explain on that topic as well no i think that's why the importance of partners around two to help qa testing of this type of thing side by side help the customer understand what the differences are from what google provides as well as what the other market providers provide i don't go deep into geocoding errors so i'm not totally in tune with that but definitely if you want to send some details to ab geo and we can all investigate we're happy to do that excellent excellent so we're going to mark off that one as well um so i don't see any more questions that have come in right now i do want to take the time to thank everybody for coming today as it says on the screen and if you do need uh to reach out to us for any reason or if you have any questions you do see our emails on the bottom of the screen and um and you do have my email as well i've invited most of you to this webinar some sign up on social media but i'll leave it with our host to send us off for the rest of the day awesome well you know thank you tim for coming on today and joining us for this call we hope to have you back again because you've been a great presenter and thanks for our audience for joining us and looking at some of these questions with us and we'd love for you to be in touch if any of this sounds good to you oh thank you guys i appreciate it a lot of fun

Channel: AppGeo

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Id: BOf0mg8Mh-c

Length: 46min 39sec (2799 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021