Why would a large enterprise business like a bank, an insurance business, a manufacturing concern, or a medical center consider purchasing business mapping software like MapBusinessOnline?
There are many reasons why large companies choose to purchase online mapping software, such as MapBusinessOnline, a secure, cloud-based map visualization tool. Read more about business mapping software here.
The most common reason business mapping companies come to MapBusinessOnline is for sales territory mapping. A big company generally has an established level of territory mapping when they come to us. But those territories may be nebulous, filled with legacy account responsibilities, or just in need of updating. The business may have morphed into something new, and territory design may need to shift from State-based territory alignment layers to ZIP-code or county alignment layers.
We still get a boatload of inquiries from enterprises whose sales territories date back to Microsoft MapPoint – a tool so old it’s got hair on it. Many ex-MapPoint users seek a replacement for this obsolete software. Expect some higher price points but more advanced functionality when you move on. (Unless you tapped into MapPoint’s fleet tracking capability, in which case you should expect to pay at least $10,000 more than MapPoint. Just saying.)
MapBusinessOnline – Sales Territories for Big Business
Sales territory mapping capabilities in MapBusinessOnline cover a wide variety of standard and advanced business requirements, including:
- Addressing overlapping sales territory exposure.
- Sales territory hierarchies (requires MapBusinessOnline Pro version.)
- Export monthly, quarterly, or annual sales results by ZIP code and territory.
- Color-code territories by sales activity, demographic characteristics, or other numeric values.
- Demographic and market analysis views of territories for expansion planning.
- Franchise sales territory development and tracking.
These are just a few of the ways big and small enterprises apply territory maps.
An Insurance Mapping Project
Strategic Planning Maps
Big business executives spend a lot of time getting all strategic. That’s a significant aspect of their jobs. But to ensure their strategic vision is as forward-thinking and innovative as possible, they must consider a geographic analysis of their business, where it makes sense.
So, where does business mapping provide the best support for strategic planning? I’m glad you asked.
Generally, strategic planning is about growth. How fast can we grow, and can we financially support the expansion? Business maps provide answers that enable faster growth:
- Business Maps Expose Opportunities – Map-based or location-based market analysis can establish where a business is doing well and extrapolate that success to undeveloped sections of the country that present similar demographics.
- Finding Gaps in Sales Coverage – Business maps displaying customer locations, color-coded by sales activity, can reveal gaps in account ownership and sales coverages. One insurance company dedicates a whole business map to exposing gaps in sales coverage.
- Merger Maps – Acquisition planning for large mergers, such as hospital system’s mergers, requires an understanding of where potential acquisition targets exist. Visualizations with firmographics of facility concentrations and competitor placements are prerequisites for merger decision-making.
- Associate Mapping – Where do all our employees reside or start their day? This question has recently become much more interesting as the Work-from-Home workplace became the norm, post-pandemic. A business map quickly displays these locations and can be tweaked to present an employee location map from various perspectives:
- Employee concentrations.
- Employee access to high-speed Internet.
- Employee proximity to health care services.
Maps Add Unique Perspectives to Strategic Planning
Risks and Liabilities
Any decent SWOT analysis is going to include a section on risks and liabilities. As businesses plan, they must consider known obstacles to growth and potential disasters that could impact a workforce, a supply chain, or a communication network.
This writer would like to believe that, as a nation, we’ve learned a thing or two about disaster preparation over the last 18 months. But then again, I don’t want to go out on a limb.
Risks and liabilities come in many flavors. A simple asset address or latitude/longitude map provides an essential reality check on where company investments are physically located:
- How many buildings exist in coastal areas at risk of hurricane or extensive winter storm damage?
- What communication networks does the company depend on for phone and computer services (inbound and outbound), and what impact would inclement weather have on those telecom assets?
- Are call center resources adequately redundant and located far enough apart to provide overlapping support during power outages or pandemics?
- Does the company have a high-speed internet work-from-home infrastructure covering 85% of the workforce?
- Are critical business resources at risk of weather, war, pandemic, flood, or fire impact?
Utility companies monitor risks like the list above regularly. Other industries must also assess risks and their impact on their constituents, customers, and the bottom line.
The pandemic of 2020/21 has severely impacted critical aspects of all kinds of businesses, many of which have location components that managers can view on a map:
- Supply chain impacts – Where are business-related bottlenecks occurring, and how can we help unblock them?
- Labor shortages – Which cites report an available workforce within commute distances of our offices?
- Where are the nursing shortages? Rank and visualize city limits by the percentage of vaccinated RN’s
We don’t claim to have answers for all the complex, post-pandemic issues US businesses face today. But I believe location-based analysis can assist in preparation for disaster and help identify where business challenges are most likely to occur. Business maps expose potential flare points and suggest mitigation pathways.
Security and Software Access
MapBusinessOnline is a cloud-based service. Large enterprises will want to ensure that their associates’ subscriptions to business mapping software in the cloud are safe and secure. At MapBusinessOnline, security and consistent access to maps and analysis are our primary concerns.
We subscribe to Www.Veracode.com for regular software penetration testing and security reviews. MapBusinessOnline is cloud-hosted by Microsoft Azure and includes all the security protocols Microsoft provides through hosted services.
SingleSignOn (SSO) access to MapBusinessOnline is available, making it easy for many end-users to safely and quickly sign-on. Ask a technical support representative to connect with your IT Group to set these access protocols up.
MapBusinessOnline privacy rules and login protocols protect your users and your business maps from outside access. Please don’t ask us to access your maps because we cannot. Your business maps are protected. Only your users can view and edit the maps they create.
So, there are lots of reasons why large businesses would invest in geographic mapping software like MapBusinessOnline. Not to mention the myriad of maps useful to business analysis in general:
- Customer & prospect mapping
- Demographic mapping
- Expansion planning
- Heat mapping
- Insurance mapping
- Location-based marketing
- Staff tracking
- ZIP-code mapping
The list goes on, like the beat. Rapidly expanding large enterprises need to add location analysis to their business processes for that geospatial perspective their competitors may already be viewing.
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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.
To access MapBusinessOnline, please register and then 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.
The Map App includes the Map Viewer app for free non-subscriber map sharing.
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