A company that was founded on giving directions is now taking location beyond the map

The holidays are a time for festive parties, family dinners, and shopping - a lot of it. In fact, the United States Postal Office alone delivered 524 million packages in December 2014 - 118,000 of them on Christmas Day.

Understandably then, the holiday season is a time when precise delivery is more important than ever, and location-based services play a big role in that. But some of the most valuable business uses for location-based technology have nothing to do with who's coming through the front door of a business, and everything to do with what's happening in the back office.

Businesses large and small can only be as successful as their supply chains are efficient, and location-based technology can make all the difference in speeding things along. Imagine being able to plan out the most optimal departure time and route for a delivery truck to achieve the most efficient route in terms of distance, traffic, mileage reimbursement, and fuel required between two locations. Every dollar saved along that journey is a boost to the business' bottom line. It's no wonder a recent study projects the location-based services and real-time location systems market to reach $54.95 billion by 2020.

These are the kinds of services MapQuest offers businesses through its Geospatial Toolkit. Far beyond a simple GPS navigation service, the toolkit offers everything from multipoint and route matrices to construction information to the maps needed to display the information - and it's free to begin integrating with a free API key. The technology can also be used to track assets throughout the supply chain, bringing critical, real-time data into one scannable dashboard.

Though it may have started as a mapping provider geared toward helping consumers get from Point A to Point B, MapQuest now offers a robust set of location-based services to businesses of all sizes. With new strategic partners, MapQuest offers the functionality and scale needed to build enterprise-level applications that process and deliver information even faster and better than before.

Every business that relies on moving goods through the back door to a customer's front door knows that the more efficiently those goods move toward their destination, the better. With location-based services evolving past the map, leveraging this important data becomes the key to better business - and a more efficient and profitable holiday season.

Click here to begin testing MapQuest's Geospatial Toolkit now.

This post is sponsored by MapQuest.

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