Today's economy and competitive pressures are forcing organizations to respond to new challenges faster and more decisively than ever. Opportunities arise quickly and are lost if companies cannot respond. Successful organizations understand the need to react within narrow time windows and armed with accurate information.

Color-coded maps show intensity of a wide variety of data variables, allowing market exploration in a geographic context.

Esri's ArcGIS Business Analyst Online helps improve performance to overcome daily business challenges. The next-generation release of Esri's popular hosted GIS for customer segmentation, market analytics, and site evaluation, ArcGIS Business Analyst Online, powered by ArcGIS Business Analyst Server, provides a rich and intuitive Web 2.0 experience to users as they analyze and explore a vast collection of economic, social, and geodemographic data.

ArcGIS Business Analyst Online Delivers Expert Analysis to the Novice

Business problems can be tackled by anyone using the guided workflows that are part of the user experience, or subscribers can take their own approach to analysis and exploration by using any combination of analysis tools and data query reports.

All ArcGIS Business Analyst software application products share a common architecture and are built using reusable components. Any data, model, or analysis created on the desktop, server, or Web can be shared, mashed up, and integrated with any of the other applications, including ArcGIS and other enterprise business tools.

ArcGIS Business Analyst Online supports the sophisticated needs of line-of-business managers and analysts yet is intuitive enough for boardroom executives and casual workers to perform detailed analysis without any prior training.

For small businesses, retailers, real estate professionals, health care practitioners, franchisors, and many other business segments, ArcGIS Business Analyst Online helps subscribers validate a business concept, understand market conditions, or investigate a hunch.

For example, a marketing specialist can view a specific neighborhood and be able to literally overlay hundreds of data variables that influence consumer buying habits and preferences. On-demand access to more than 50 reports, 1,600 data variables, thematic maps, and time-saving "quick comparison" features allow users to explore a geographic region easily.

ArcGIS Business Analyst Online is reaching into many market sectors and industries that have not had access to easy GIS functionality before.

Retailers can explore markets through more innovative criteria to predict the success of sales promotions or assess the impact of competitors' activities on the customer base. For economic developers, the system helps fine-tune and consolidate the processes of attracting inward investment to cities and counties by providing information that reflects local taste and market opportunity right down to the block group level.

Banks and financial institutions are using the application to better understand local markets and the needs of their customers. U.S. government funding under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has driven many to perform detailed neighborhood analysis around their branches so they can determine which locations are the most viable and where there should be consolidation.

New Tools Ensure Accuracy and Ease of Use

This release of ArcGIS Business Analyst Online is a leap forward in interacting with the types of geodemographic data that users in any organization need. Enhanced site comparison tools and new reports allow users to quickly gain knowledge of how their markets are performing now and assess future potential. In addition to the inclusion of 2009 demographic data updates and 2014 projections, the application includes new ways to visualize data and download it in a digestible format. Comparing a region or particular set of sites to identify both strong and weak performers can be done with a few mouse clicks, while benchmarking performance against key criteria is easy with workflow and export wizards. Improved support for data interchange with desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office and other common enterprise systems, is also included. Esri has tapped into its wealth of cartographic and charting experience, and ArcGIS Business Analyst Online contains simple menus and control wizards to automatically guide users to their most popular reports and help navigate the first-time user through the analysis process or automate benchmarking conditions through which to compare a firm's real estate portfolio.

Choose Level of Service

Thousands of companies and individuals have already integrated ArcGIS Business Analyst into their decision-making processes, making it an important business resource. The application is available in different subscription levels, from onetime-only reports purchased using a credit card to premium subscription packages and specialized development services. Want to try it out? More than 100 variables are available free for guest users at bao.esri.com. For more information on what's new in ArcGIS Business Analyst Online, visit www.esri.com/whatsnewinbao.