Announcing ArcGIS Business Analyst

The gravity model considers competition and other user-defined criteria to measure predicted sales.

In a continued commitment to the business user in any industry—be it retail, financial, health care, local government, utilities, or other—Esri is providing business solutions on two fronts.

In 1998, Esri introduced ArcView Business Analyst in response to the need in the business industry for a product that combines GIS analysis tools with high-quality data from industry-leading data providers. With the introduction of the ArcGIS platform, it was only natural to make the same tools available to the ArcGIS user in newly released ArcGIS Business Analyst 8.3.

In 2002, Esri established Esri Business Information Solutions (Esri BIS), a team of professionals who focus on meeting and supporting the specific needs of the business user through solutions that include products and services (see "Explore the Suite of Data Products From Esri BIS").

Now, ArcGIS Business Analyst provides tools, applications, and data to assist users with mission-critical decisions such as analyzing their market and competition, finding the ideal site for a new business location, or targeting their direct mail. ArcGIS Business Analyst lets users perform sophisticated business analysis in one easy-to-use application.

ArcGIS Business Analyst helps users see patterns, trends, and markets they might not have identified using tabular data alone. Marketing, sales, and real estate departments in any organization can create detailed trade areas, evaluate market penetration, and perform competitive analysis using the data sets that come with ArcGIS Business Analyst. This data includes 1990 and 2000 census data, 2003 estimates, and 2008 projections. Users can also access and download data directly from the Internet into ArcGIS Business Analyst. In addition, ArcGIS Business Analyst includes a national database of shopping centers, business listings, and household consumers. ArcGIS Business Analyst logically organizes and symbolizes compressed nationwide data sets to simplify report generation and analytic map creation. Accurate analysis and reports are created through the use of block point data retrieval.

Market areas can be defined by the distance customers travel to stores. Desire lines allow users to calculate market penetration, locate untapped market areas, and more.

With ArcGIS Business Analyst, all analyses can be performed directly on the compressed nationwide data sets provided with the product. Users can perform drive-time analysis over a nationwide street network, find locations similar to that of their best store, define customer-based trade areas, conduct market penetration analysis, and perform customer or store prospecting. Additionally, users can define store trade areas based on simple or data-driven rings, equal competition, drive time, or threshold rings. Users can also create gravity models that show how well new sites will perform given the competition in the area using spatial aggregation of their own or the provided data.

ArcGIS Business Analyst provides the user with an integrated data presentation that makes it easy to switch between basemaps and thematic maps for display of the analysis results.

Tools and Data All in One Place

ArcGIS Business Analyst combines Esri's leading GIS technology with an extensive suite of nationwide business, demographic, and consumer household data from industry-leading data providers to give users a complete and easy-to-use solution for research, marketing, and analysis:

• Business Data—A national database of more than 12 million U.S. businesses from infoUSA, Inc., which can be used to identify customers or competitors and includes data by industry, sales volume, employees, geography, and more.
• Shopping Center Data—The National Research Bureau tracks the following information on nearly 14,000 shopping centers with more than 100,000 square feet of gross leasable area (GLA) across the United States: alphabetical listing, center name, metropolitan statistical area (MSA), city, county, market positioning strategy, space availability, planned/proposed/new centers, expanding/renovating centers, major owner, leasing agent, and management.
• Household Consumer Data—Experian current-year national consumer database of more than 105 million households with more than 28 household attributes including age, gender, income, and more. For customer prospecting and market penetration analysis, Hyphos360, Inc., uses Experian consumer data to provide household counts and mailing lists based on the criteria defined in ArcGIS Business Analyst.
• Street Information—Nationwide street database in ArcGIS StreetMap USA from Geographic Data Technology, Inc. (GDT). This street database enhances TIGER 2000 source data and provides a nationwide basemap for routing and drive-time analysis.
• Demographic Information—Users can choose one of two data providers for nationwide demographic information:
• Esri Business Information Solutions—Esri BIS offers more than 1,000 variables, including 2003 and 2008 projections, along with 2003 estimates for employee population; population by occupation/industry; disposable income; consumer expenditures by state, county, ZIP Code, tract, and block group level; and, at the census tract level, ACORN market segmentation data.
• Applied Geographic Solutions, Inc.—Applied Geographic Solutions, Inc. (AGS), offers more than 800 variables, including current-year estimates and five- and 10-year projections on demographic attributes, along with current-year estimates for daytime population by occupation; disposable income; climate data; crime indexes; and consumer expenditures by state, county, ZIP Code, tract, and block group level.

ArcGIS Business Analyst 8.3 includes the following software:

• ArcView 8.3—the world's leading desktop GIS
• ArcGIS StreetMap USA—street mapping and address matching for the entire United States
• Centrus Geocoder from Sagent Technology, Inc.—for accurate address standardization and batch geocoding
• Crystal Decisions' Crystal Reports 9.0—includes Web reports and integration with Microsoft Office

ArcGIS Business Analyst is available for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP (Home Edition and Professional) operating systems. ArcGIS Business Analyst comes with ArcView, but it can be used with ArcInfo or ArcEditor as well. For more information, visit www.esri.com/businessanalyst or www.esribis.com, call Esri at 1-800-447-9778, or contact your Esri regional office. Outside the United States, please contact your local Esri distributor.