A research study conducted by World Wide Works and mapIT has concluded that digital mapping has become one of the strongest growth areas in South Africa’s Information Technology (IT) sector.
In South Africa, 76 percent of corporations and 38 percent of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) spend more than two percent of their IT budgets on mapping services. This relates to SMEs spending R50,000 (US$5,628) per year and 22 percent of the larger corporates spending more than R500,000 (US$56,280) per year.
The survey included interviews with 111 IT and logistics decision-makers in corporations as well as 400 business decision-makers at various SMEs.
“Digital mapping is proving to be the hidden secret weapon of South African business. The research underlines the extent to which large and small businesses alike depend on digital maps not only for navigation and tracking, but also for efficiency, productivity and security,” said Etienne Louw, chief executive for mapIT.
“The biggest surprise in the findings was the extent to which budgets are growing. Two-thirds of large corporations and SME’s alike – 69 percent and 66 percent respectively – intend to increase their spending on digital mapping services in 2013,” said Arthur Goldstruck, World Wide Worx managing director.
The main reasons for using digital mapping services include asset tracking services, such as fleet management, vehicle tracking and recovery as well as navigation.
Location-based marketing (LBM) is also emerging as a reason for using digital maps. 35 percent are already using digital maps for LBM while 19 percent are planning to do the same this year./p>
