Expansion Planning Using Heat Maps
Problem: Need to Transform New Product Success into New Market Opportunities
ABC Furniture manufacturing manufactures and distributes furniture through show rooms across the Eastern USA. The ABC reclining chair profits have proved to be significant and the company is interested in developing the market further. The best way to accomplish this is to either build showrooms or partner with showrooms in underserved areas.
Solution: Visualize Sales with MBO Heat Map - Find ZIP Codes for Growth
ABC uses MapBusinessOnline to graphically display where sales most often occur, and by omission, where they do not occur at all. The MBO ZIP code layer is turned on and color coded to reflect ZIP codes with the highest Median Income per Population, a ratio calculation. These rust red colored ZIP codes should be the best target areas for growth.
Next, a dataset of 2016 recliner sales by outlet address is imported into MBO and turned into a Heat Map layer. The brighter blue hot spots reflect areas of intense sales, the cooler darker spots show less sales, and again by omission, reflect areas with no sales that are under consideration for better representation.
How to Create a Retail Sales Heat Map
- Make sure your data records have at least two columns. One column for location and a second column with numeric data describing your subject – in this case, sales of recliners
- Import your location or address based dataset into MapBusinessOnline
- Click the Heat Map Button on the Master Toolbar
- Select your target data set and make sure the numeric data column is selected
- Choose an appropriate color scheme and an intensity setting
- Process your heat map
To display the heat map against a demographic scheme:
- Turn on the ZIP code layer
- In Map & Data, hover over the ZIP code layer and click the Edit Gear. Choose Manage Calculated Data Columns. Add a Data Column, name it, and pick the operation parameters – Overall Population/High Med Income
- Use the Color Code Map button, accessing your Calculated Data option (from 2) and color code ZIP codes to best reflect your target market
Your best ZIP codes for new showrooms supporting new sales opportunities will be ZIP codes with optimum demographics and no sales activity, and nearby ZIP codes with optimum demographics close to areas with maximum sales activity, perhaps within a specific drive time distance of existing stores – for example an hour’s drive away.
Learn How Our Customers are Succeeding with MapBusinessOnline
"We've tried the REST now we are using the BEST. After searching and trying other mapping programs for our delivery operations team and finding that we just couldn't get all the features that we required, we finally found MapBusinessOnline. Not only did it have all the features we needed including Longitude/Latitude and optimizing delivery routes, but it provided us tons of other bells and whistles. MBO proved to be a superb tool for our operations team to create routes and territories with the click of a few buttons while also allowing our reporting team to make beautiful maps that help our executive team visualize the story the data was telling. We are using this for the 2nd year in a row and will be renewing when it is time again. We pride ourselves at offering cutting edge applications to our millions of readers and subscribers worldwide and love that MBO helps us stay ahead of the technology curve by continuing to update their product and features. The release of MBO for the Desktop was a great addition and only helps make using the product even easier. To the staff at MBO — Keep up the great work!"
Dow Jones
"Map Business Online is the only tool available that allowed our team the ability to create visual territories by zip code and then export the data into a spreadsheet. We were able to then populate our ERP system with that data/logic and create automated rules based on customer address zip codes. We cut out the manual process of inside sales entering incorrect freight delivery zones upon sales order entry. Now when sales orders are entered, we automatically populate the correct delivery zones that MBO allowed us to create. Ultimately, this is saving our company money and improving efficiency when shipping material to customers.
I highly recommend MBO, and we only have scratched the surface with what the solution can do."
Patrick Kloiber
Business Intelligence Manager
Palisades Holdings, Inc.
"Very satisfied and happy with the program! Our organization was a little nervous when we found out we had to replace MapPoint. Once we came across MapBusinessOnline, we knew we had found the program for us. Not only are there many features for the map creators, there are also a lot of usable features for the individuals that receive the view-only shared maps. This is a great program and with the way our organization is changing, I have no concern about recommending it to other internal departments."
Business Manager
I-Car
Popular MapBusinessOnline features
Emphasize customers density with heat maps
Color code maps by ZIP code, county, or state
Display business data against demographic maps
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