This week’s MapBusinessOnline user business mapping software profile is a franchise company territory planner.
We often get calls from administrators or managers tasked with setting up and maintaining franchise territory maps. Franchise businesses generally have sales areas that cover all of the USA and Canada. Active territories may focus on major metropolitan urban areas, but the general scope of the maps are typically nationwide so it is important to use a business map with USA wide coverage and a variety of options for map layer alignment.
Franchise companies like to make sure that territories do not overlap. This is especially true where the franchise area selling rights are actually purchased by franchisees. Overlapping franchise territories are typically not allowed in these cases. It is always a good idea to turn on territory overlap indicators, which will show any overlap errors made during territory creation. Some companies allow overlap, some don’t but it is always a good idea to be aware of where overlapping territories exist. MapBusinessOnline includes territory intersection or overlap controls in the Map Options of Map and Data.
Territories for franchise organizations are most often based on zip codes. That is, ZIP codes are used as the alignment map layer. In highly populated urban areas I’ve seen some franchises break their territories down by Census tract. An obvious reason for this smaller territory segmentation is that franchises are often sold by geographic section. The more segments you have, the more franchises you can sell. Selling smaller jurisdictions as franchise territories means more potential revenue for the franchise company.
A territory alignment scheme covering a franchise system often requires two color shades. Green often indicates a franchise area is available for purchase, while red could indicate that area has already been sold or committed to another buyer. Other color options can be applied as required.
Demographic Data Supports Decision Making
Demographic information is a helpful reference for franchise territories, especially for franchising that focuses on consumer oriented products and services. One Canadian customer uses MapBusinessOnline to establish remote senior care franchises across all of the Canadian provinces. Franchise sales territory areas were established by postal code while county areas were used to display senior population groups in age ranges for reference. This combination of two demographic datasets across the territory map helped sell the franchise concept to potential franchisees.
MapBusinessOnline is able to combine demographic data layers – like age brackets. We call these data combinations calculated data columns. Our senior care franchisor combined all the Senior Citizen Population age brackets for ages 65 and up by county. This allowed franchise planners to consider the areas with the largest senior population across both densely and less populated areas by county. Our Canadian home care franchisers also considered household income in their analysis. All demographic categories were visible on the map for reference, either by color-code map layers or by label addendums.
Adding demographic layers to territory analysis means a franchise buyer can export a spreadsheet that displays key demographic data for their target franchise area. This can serve as a base line reference for future growth. It also answers the question, what other areas contain similar demographics to my best performing franchise territories?
Saving Your Franchise Territory Map
It pays to carefully consider how to store and share your franchise territory maps. MapBusinessOnline provides a map Template folder in the save map dialogue process. By saving your master territory map as a map template, you can protect that map from your general audience of map users or co-editing MapBusinessOnline subscribers. Co-editing subscribers may be using the MapBusinessOnline team subscription for collaborative editing of maps.
Use the template map as the master territory map for your franchise business. After creating your base-line territory map, save it and protect it as a template map. Make subset maps from the master template using a “save-as” process. That way, most of your heavy lifting is applied to one master map that nobody else can over-write. MapBusinessOnline Team Edition subscriptions can be set-up if you have users who require the ability to edit maps, as opposed to just view maps.
Example Franchise Map by Census Tract
Communicating Franchise Territories
Business maps allow franchise territory marketers to share their territory layout with potential franchise buyers or existing franchisees. Interactive web urls’s provide views of franchise territory maps that clearly display franchise availability along with other business elements. These web links can be shared as they are requested, via email.
Shared maps for view only purposes allow constituents to click on map objects or points, study labeling and other map text, and even conduct spatial queries and radius searches to understand as much as they can about their potential investment. These shared maps can describe who owns which franchise area or they be may be used to show only uncommitted areas. Shared maps encourage faster communication of critical business elements impacting business decisions.
Franchise owners and franchisees use maps to describe and understand their business realities. It’s all part of the business of communication or the communication of business, whichever you prefer.
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MapBusinessOnline access has officially transitioned from Web Browser (Adobe Flash Player) access to the Map App download access.
- Please download the Map App from the website – https://www.mapbusinessonline.com/App-Download.aspx.
- After installing the Map App, the MapBusinessOnline launch button will be in the Windows’ Start Menu or Mac Application folder. Find the MapBusinessOnline folder in the Start Menu scrollbar. Click the folder’s dropdown arrow and choose the MapBusinessOnline option. You can drag the icon to the taskbar for a quick launch button.
- All saved maps will be available through your Map Library Folder, the second button in from the left on the Master Toolbar. (Green File Folder icon.)
Map App access to MapBusinessOnline.com provides enhanced features and a better user experience.
The Map App includes the new Map Viewer app for free non-subscriber map sharing.
Value-Added Resellers – Offer the tool to your customers as a reseller. Make money on training and consulting. Contact us with further interest in reselling MapBusinessOnline.
Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution. The best replacement for Microsoft MapPoint happens to be the most affordable.
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Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com
