AURORA, Colo. - June 4, 2012 - Businesses crave certainty. In a tough global economy, the more you can predict, the more you can reduce risk and effectively plan to increase profits.

While a business degree helps, many leading companies are turning to a new management discipline called geographic information systems, or GIS. It's technology that allows managers and executives to combine and analyze large amounts of information for predictive analytics.

While GIS can help companies identify customer trends and optimize their operations, it can go one step further to geospatial predictive modeling.

Proper use of GIS technology can help a business identify future trends, developing consumer habits and upcoming business needs using extensive data and statistical analysis to predict what is likely to happen to help companies compete and thrive.

"GIS-skilled technicians are purveyors and contributors of information and present representations of geospatial information to a non-technical audience that can be used to predict and overcome business challenges," says Gabe Schmidbauer, GIS professor at American Sentinel University. "Rather than simply relying on intuition, executives are using GIS data, analysis and systematic reasoning to improve efficiency, reduce risk and increase profits."

For example, retail chains can combine data about consumer preferences and changing population patterns to determine the cost-effective remaining life of individual store locations. With that type of information, executives can determine where to both close and open stores to maintain profitability. Banks can analyze potential merger and acquisition opportunities.

Any company could plot periodic market research results onto maps to build trends by location to predict future market demands and customer segmentation.

And because GIS uses location as a unifying factor in analysis, companies can use data that they would otherwise find difficult to directly correlate and compare. That's why predictive analysis of customer trends and business conditions can be difficult to undertake without GIS.

Location connects information that a company otherwise stores and examines separately. Here are just a few examples of what a business could undertake using geospatial predictive analysis:

-Meteorological data and long-range predictions can point to likely weather for customers. A business can then create a direct marketing campaign for goods appropriate to the temperatures and precipitation levels.

-Companies can use geospatial predictive analysis to identify such potential problems as labor strikes, transportation disruptions, political instability, and public health issues that could disrupt operations.

-Geospatial predictive modeling can help facilities managers identify the likelihood of failure in buildings and equipment, to better schedule and coordinate preventative maintenance.

"GIS provides stakeholders with a new methodology to visualize strategic business data," says professor Schmidbauer. "GIS has also combined forces with business intelligence to provide maps alongside traditional charts and graphs that has made it easier for executives to make the case for embracing analytics when making key business decisions."

Most importantly, GIS development has made the technology to be user-friendlier for the non-technical executives and can now be easily interfaced via the Web, tablets and smartphones to help executives answer the important questions, "What's next?" and "What should we do about it?"

Learn more about American Sentinel University's GIS degrees at http://www.americansentinel.edu/online-degree/bachelor-degree-online/bachelor-gis-degree.php.

About American Sentinel University
American Sentinel University delivers the competitive advantages of accredited associate, bachelor's and master's online degree programs focused on the needs of high-growth sectors, including information technology, computer science, GIS, computer information systems and business intelligence degrees. The university is accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), which is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency and is a recognized member of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.