Summary
Prologis is a logistics real estate company focused on supplying warehouse space in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Prologis lacked an efficient way to consolidate and visualize its increasing volumes of data, making it difficult to perform site analysis, monitor supply chain challenges, and identify warehouse space shortages.
Korem developed an intuitive custom platform with Google Maps APIs, which enabled the company to centralize its internal and external data for better warehouse analysis.
The client
Prologis is a logistics real estate company focused on supplying the most modern and geographically diverse platform of warehouse space in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Because the company works for a wide variety of customers from different regions and cities, it looks at many types of data, such as truck and product movement, demographics, income, driving distances, and historical traffic patterns, to find the best possible locations for new warehouse space. Using mapping and location technology, Prologis targets buildings and available land that are in proximity to areas with high consumer demand, contain a substantial labor pool, and include plenty of transportation options.
The Challenge
With each region exhibiting a unique set of market characteristics and rapidly shifting demographics, Prologis must work with increasingly high volumes of up-to-date data, including internal and competitive information from partners and customers that goes beyond location data. However, the real estate company did not have an efficient way of consolidating and visualizing data in a single mapping platform.
As a result, when performing site analysis, monitoring supply chain challenges, and identifying warehouse space shortages, leasing officers had to build their own mini-Google Earth with its own datasets for each city and market. This was both time-consuming and inefficient, partly because without an effective way to visualize the results derived from those datasets, Prologis’ clients needed to be coached to fully understand them.
Moreover, as the company had reported that the vacancy rate of its depots was extremely low, it was imperative to locate more available land on which to build additional warehouses or to find alternative solutions.
The Solution
Prologis’ customer journey started with Korem’s team developing a personalized mapping platform based on the Google Maps Application Programming Interface (APIs), which its users internally referred to as a self-service GIS platform. It helped them understand and visualize the location of the company’s real estate properties and other proprietary datasets from a geographic perspective.
Satisfied with the product and the experience, Prologis wanted to extend the project to have a more complete solution, along with hosting, managed, and integration services provided by Korem. Ever since, the platform has continued to evolve with the addition of new features and a wide range of geospatial and descriptive datasets that provide even more value to Prologis’ internal users.
”Prologis has had a relationship with Korem for several years now, and I don’t see that ending anytime soon.”
Kevin Wang, Vice President of advanced analytics at Prologis
Thanks to the platform’s ease of use, Prologis employees were able to take advantage of it quickly without requiring much training. In fact, it is estimated that over 90% of the company uses it, with the remaining 10% in positions that never deal directly with the properties.
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Key results
More than 90% technology adoption
Analyses per area or market
Faster, better decision-making
The Results
By consolidating all data into a single, intuitive platform, Prologis’ various divisions—whether construction, deployment, leasing, or sales—can more effectively leverage numerous data sources and have a complete view of existing and potential warehouse locations.
With access to mapping tools, it is now easier and quicker to categorize, analyze, and interpret data by specific regions or markets, even for those with a limited understanding of geospatial technology. Prologis can now more confidently perform site analysis, undertake land valuations, monitor existing and available warehouse spaces, understand its market coverage, and track its properties as well as those of its competitors.
This way, Prologis’ customers can more quickly be provided with a warehouse location that suits their needs. And with the right location, they can improve their operations and better meet the growing demand for delivery, thereby reducing their supply chain challenges.
The Future
The new solution developed by Korem helps Prologis determine how it could make data-driven decisions to solve its extremely low warehouse vacancy rate. Under normal circumstances, when there is enough land and property for sale on the market, Prologis evaluates where it would make the most sense to expand and invest by building or purchasing new depots. But with the current shortage of real estate, the company has no other choice than to explore alternatives, such as dividing existing spaces to serve multiple customers.
In the end, Korem’s solution generated incisive ideas and quick actions, inspiring Prologis to develop new tools and technologies that will help assess even more use cases in the future.
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