Our Vision - To map your data

A lot of people ask us how we got to where we are as a company – how we came to focus on mapping apps for mobile workers. We initially had the idea of simply putting business data on a map – in many different contexts, such as real estate, retail, and operations. Having business backgrounds ourselves, we saw the utility of being able to see data on a map to infer trends. But as we started to talk to customers, we realized that this idea got especially interesting when people could use and interact with this data in real time, when they were conducting their work outside the office. It became clear that technology had created a new opportunity in this area. Managers had been looking at data on a map for a while (mostly through business intelligence tools and territory realignment software). But mobile workers, the boots on the ground, so to speak, weren’t at a computer so they never had the ability to take advantage of their location data. But that limitation has been lifted. Mobile technology has created a new market for location data within enterprise software, an opportunity too great to pass on.

Although the “location” problem was solved a few years ago for consumers by services like Yelp and Google Maps, the business side has been slow to catch up. Today, a consumer can easily pull out their smart phone or tablet to see where all of the pizza restaurants are around them, get relevant information on them, and figure out how to get to the one that they want. However, mobile workers cannot do the same thing in a business context. For example, a sales person can’t pull out their mobile device to see a map built from their data that shows where their customers are to ultimately decide which ones to visit the same way a consumer can with pizza restaurants. We think one reason for this is that the location problem was solvable for the consumer before it was for the business worker. Consumers adopted mobile technology before businesses did. However, today, through new mobile investment initiatives and Bring-Your-Own-Device policies, mobile workers now have the same mobile capabilities as consumers do.

There are many millions of mobile workers. While specific users and needs vary widely across this population, our vision is to improve their work lives and make them more productive by helping them make sense of where they are and where they should go by mapping their data. It’s an exciting challenge that we feel fortunate to have the opportunity to solve.

Aaron Tolson

Co-Founder | Badger Mapping

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