What's Coming in ArcGIS Business Analyst 9.3

ArcGIS Business Analyst 9.3 will include a number of new enhancements to expand report functionality and improve existing analysis techniques and features.

Benchmark Report

• Compare multiple trade areas against one another to easily measure the demographic differences and similarities.
• Benchmark or compare against any of the following:
  • An existing trade area.
  • The statistical average of all trade areas.
  • The statistical median of all trade areas.

Customization of Existing Summary Reports

You can now modify any standard summary report bundled with ArcGIS Business Analyst. For instance, you can start with the Age Report, open it in the Advanced Report Editor, remove fields and/or add a section of your own variables.

Map Series Report

• Use the Map Layout Report to quickly produce map views of multiple areas and convert them into presentation quality reports or image files.
• Map titles can be customized for each map and read from the trade area layer.
• Maps can be created out of the ArcMap "Data View" or "Layout View."
• Layout templates can be used in conjunction with the Map Series Report to include cartographic elements such as scale bars, north arrows, legends, and neatlines.

Custom Variable Lists

• When you are repeating tasks that require the same demographic variable outputs, you can now create and save custom variable lists for use in reports, analyses, trade areas, and tools.
• Variable lists for each standard summary report are now stored in ArcGIS Business Analyst as fields in the attribute table, allowing you to avoid manually loading each variable.
• Different list options include:
  • Save your own variables to a custom retrievable list
  • Use the fields in existing summary reports
  • Use the fields in existing summary reports plus add additional fields to make your own custom list
  • Save, send, import, and export lists so you can share lists between users or machines

Customer Prospecting by Principal Components Analysis

Using the Principal Components Analysis technique, you can now rank geographies by demographic characteristics to find the customers most similar to your customer demographic profile. This borrows from the Find Similar tool to output a thematic map layer for the overall ranking of variables.