Ask instead what a business map can do for your business. The answer to that question will vary depending upon your business. Think about your company or organization’s primary goals. Is your business focused on servicing people or is your company focused on simply driving revenue? Business mapping tools provide benefits for both types of organizations but in slightly different ways.
Let’s look at territory management. For a company whose primary goal is driving revenue or profit, effective and clearly communicated sales territory management can provide clear guidelines for success, a place for sharing progress toward goals, and many ways to drive accountability into the sales organization.
Applying business sales territory designs to your business will inevitably help drive revenue. You grow what you track. Use territory mapping tools to define where your salespeople can and should sell. Use route planning software and drive time tools to minimize windshield time. Reduce overlap and legacy relationships that may no longer drive revenue. Sales managers know exactly what I’m talking about here. Leverage the power of business geography to apply these fixes and then use the map to share the results. You’ll be amazed at how a little map communication can enhance your business processes.
Organizations focused on servicing people can also benefit from territory mapping tools. What home care agency doesn’t want to minimize clinicians and aides driving back and forth across town to service patients? Establishing clear areas of responsibility drives efficiency and productivity into your organization. And there’s a difference between the two. Reducing day-to-day travel expenses is a result of efficient route planning with minimal overlap between staff members. Reducing travel times while increasing face time with patients improves overall productivity. More productivity is going to:
- Keep more patients at home for longer periods
- Increase the satisfaction of your patients
- Both of above points will drive more referrals
Now that is productivity and it starts with establishing territories.
Drive Time Analysis
Understanding the time it takes to drive from point A to point B to point C may, at times, be critical to your business. Business mapping software can conduct this analysis for you quickly and in multiple ways. Perhaps it’s simply answering the question of how long will it take me to get to my meeting on time based on a generated multi-stop route. I have two stops prior to my meeting. This calculation is dirt simple and will provide a reasonable estimate of your time to drive. But what if you want to know how long it will take for the closest 50,000 households, making more than $75,000 per year, to reach your retail outlet? A drive time map can answer that question.
In fact drive time analysis can be easily converted into demographic analysis simply by assigning demographic categories to any zip codes touched by a drive time polygon. For more granular detail use Census tracts instead of zip codes. And don’t stop there. Import a list of competitor locations to get a sense of where the competition locates their stores.
I always find a business map increases in value as you stare at it. The longer you look, the more data you find.
And Drive Time analysis is great for operational planning too. Home care agencies use drive time estimates to determine how far a clinician or aide must drive to reach a group of clients. Here are a few scenarios home care agencies might implement:
- Develop maps that display all clients residing within a half hour drive of a clinician’s home address. These half hour drive time territories could become a standard rule for client assignment, designed to lower fuel costs and increase client face-time
- Create a business map showing the current client/clinician locations during a week prior to a holiday weekend to help plan for the hospital release/admission rush common at these times. Knowing your current staffing realities helps better position your agency for periods of overload.
- Create an outlier map showing clients living beyond a 40 minute drive of all clinicians. Are there more than one? Is there a reason to hire a clinician to cover a new area? Should these clients be referred to other agencies or contractors?
Ask Instead, Again
Now perhaps driving revenue and caring for people isn’t your company’s bailiwick. Many business mapping users work for organizations dedicated to other things. Here are a few examples:
- Billboard management firms
- Waster material collection and recycling
- Lawn mowing companies
- Copier repair services
- Insurance claim management
- Booze distribution and wholesale
- Compressed air machine distribution
- Ice cream retailer franchises
- Nation-wide flower distribution and wholesale
- Real estate mortgage management
- Banks and finance companies
- Robotic companies
- Houseware and gift sales orgs
- Manufacturers rep associations
- Truck distribution and repair
- Moving companies
That list was generated by looking at my notes covering the last two weeks’ of incoming calls. Ask not where all these companies come from, ask instead why they all are using Map Business Online.
Find out why over 25,000 business users log into MapBusinessOnline.com
Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035, (207) 939-6866
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