Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Blind to Site, Part II


When last seen - before helping others migrate to, install and use version 10 all over the U.S. - our intrepid hero (me) was explaining the difference between location characteristics (regional data concerning demography, housing, etc.) and primary site characteristics (point data about the actual relative physical footprint).

At RPM, we collect – and include in the GIS, on-the-fly – more than 45 individual primary site characteristics for every existing and proposed store location in a client network.  When examining prospective sites, we take along a Samsung Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) running full versions of Excel and ArcMap.

We capture the data in the Samsung using an Excel spreadsheet…

 Lots and lots of data…


More data indeed than we can or will show.  And, we can even use the UMPC as a camera and take site and location pictures we can include in the GIS.  And then...

Integrate it, on the fly, with the GIS in ArcMap, where we can manage it in a GIS context with location data, site data, competitor data, market potential data, and performance data – and see if we can determine which site factors and which location factors are correlated with performance.  And then...

We build/update a dynamic optimum site model.  This is where we are going – not just collecting data on a mobile device, not just sharing it with others, but integrating it into the GIS so we can estimate the impact on network, customers and prospects.  Fast.

Next time, we’ll show you some live examples in the field, and how we pull the spreadsheet into ArcMap and Business Analyst.   


And, we’ll discuss how you can get a free Samsung UMPC (or ASUS GIS notebook) FREE with your customized GIS pre-installed, with your RPM and ESRI relationship.
 

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