From Data to Decisions: How CARTO, MBI and HERE Technologies Power Location Intelligence

Making the right location-based decision requires powerful technology combined with the right data. Where are potential customers located? How strong is their purchasing power? Where are competitors, stores and services? How will demand develop, and which markets offer the greatest opportunities or risks?

These are questions organizations across retail, telecommunications, financial services and many other industries need to answer. CARTO, the Agentic GIS Platform, works with MBI to bring trusted market and location data into its spatial analytics environment, helping organizations turn complex geospatial information into actionable insights.

A Partnership Built Around Trusted Data

Through its partnership with MBI, CARTO makes a broad portfolio of globally consistent and comparable market data available through its Data Observatory. Users can enrich their spatial analyses with insights ranging from Population and Sociodemographics to Purchasing Power, Consumer Spending, Retail Centrality, Consumer Styles, and Political and Economic Risk.

“MBI provides a complete and reliable source of market knowledge across almost every country in the world. Their portfolio spans a wide range of demographic and economic indicators, from population breakdowns to political and economic risk, giving our clients a genuinely holistic view of any market they are analyzing”, said Vanessa Lopez, Data Partnerships Lead at CARTO.

This breadth allows organizations to go beyond individual indicators and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the markets they analyze. Consistent geographic coverage also enables international organizations to apply comparable analyses across countries and regions.

Combining Market Potential with Location Context

The partnership also gives CARTO access to HERE Location Data through MBI. As an official HERE Distributor, MBI supplies CARTO with HERE Places, adding detailed information about points of interest and real-world locations to the market intelligence available for spatial analysis. Beyond Places data, CARTO also uses HERE Location Services such as Isoline Routing. This enables catchment and accessibility analysis based on travel time or distance across different transport modes, including car, traffic-aware driving and pedestrian travel.

HERE is one of the most established location data providers worldwide. Its broad global coverage and consistent data structure make HERE Places and Location Services a reliable source of location context for organizations operating across different markets.

Together, the data supplied by MBI provides complementary perspectives. MBI’s market data helps organizations understand the people, purchasing power, consumer behavior and economic conditions within a market, while HERE Places provides detailed information about the locations that shape it. This allows CARTO users to understand not only where opportunities exist, but also the market conditions and characteristics behind them.

For a retailer, for example, knowing the locations of existing stores and competitors is only the starting point. Combining HERE Places with MBI Purchasing Power, sociodemographic characteristics, Consumer Spending and population data makes it possible to assess the potential demand surrounding a location and compare opportunities across markets.

From Site Selection to Network Optimization

The combination of CARTO’s technology and the data supplied by MBI supports a wide range of Location Intelligence use cases.

In retail, combining CARTO with MBI and HERE data can help businesses make more informed site selection decisions. A coffee chain planning its next location, for example, can evaluate existing store catchments alongside MBI Retail Spending potential and competitor locations from HERE Places. This makes it possible to identify high-potential whitespace, detect possible cannibalization between existing stores and rank candidate locations based on the characteristics of their surrounding market.

For telecommunications, Location Intelligence can help operators decide where network expansion will create the greatest value. In the fiber expansion example below, demographic and market information can be analyzed alongside existing and planned infrastructure to identify underserved areas and prioritize potential expansion zones. Instead of looking at network coverage alone, operators can incorporate factors such as household density and revenue potential into their investment decisions.

CARTO’s Agentic GIS capabilities can further accelerate these workflows. AI agents allow teams to interact with complex spatial analyses through questions such as where the highest-potential whitespace is located, which existing stores may be cannibalizing each other’s trade areas, or which underserved zones should be prioritized for network expansion.

Beyond retail and telecommunications, these capabilities can support applications in financial services, logistics, healthcare and the public sector, including market expansion, risk assessment and territory planning.

Turning Trusted Data into Actionable Location Intelligence

The partnership combines complementary strengths: CARTO provides the technology for spatial analysis and Agentic GIS, while MBI provides the data foundation with its globally consistent and comparable market intelligence and HERE location data supplied through its role as an official HERE Distributor.

Ray Roberts-York, Managing Director at MBI, describes the partnership as follows: “Great partnerships are built on trust, transparency, and a shared commitment to helping customers succeed. That is exactly what we have built with CARTO over several years. By combining CARTO’s powerful GIS platform with MBI’s global market data and HERE location data and services delivered through our HERE Distribution, customers can turn trusted data into clear, actionable location intelligence.”

For customers, this means they can bring together internal business information with external market and location data to answer concrete questions about where to invest, expand or optimize their operations.

The impact of data-driven Location Intelligence can already be seen in real-world applications. Frederic Neumager, Network Development Manager at Group Renault, describes how CARTO helped the company consolidate its approach to analyzing its European dealership network:

“CARTO has allowed us to move away from disparate solutions to one single app to understand site performance across our dealership network in Europe, which has enabled us to be more data-driven & increase sales.”

As AI becomes an increasingly important part of geospatial analysis, access to trusted and comprehensive data becomes even more critical. The partnership between CARTO and MBI brings together advanced geospatial technology, globally consistent and comparable market intelligence and trusted HERE location data, providing organizations with a strong foundation for faster and more informed location-based decisions.

Want to explore the possibilities? Get in touch with CARTO to discover how trusted market and location data can enhance your spatial analyses.

Want to see the partnership in action? Watch our joint webinar with CARTO on demand to discover how MBI market data and HERE location data can be combined with CARTO to support real-world Location Intelligence use cases.

About CARTO

CARTO is the Agentic GIS platform. Unlike other GIS systems, CARTO removes data fragmentation and technical bottlenecks by letting you build AI Agents, geospatial workflows, and interactive maps directly inside your cloud data warehouse or lakehouse. With CARTO for Agents, those same capabilities extend into the agentic platforms your teams already use, so spatial analysis and reports run at scale without manual effort. Every team gets Location Intelligence that lives inside your existing, governed cloud infrastructure, and powers use cases like network planning, risk assessments, and identifying growth opportunities.