Franchise Territory Mapping Tools

The old adage that the three things that matter most in real estate are location, location and location is only half true. The most important factor is the relationship between the property’s purpose and its geographic location, especially when it comes to your business’ profitability.

Think about the way you chose your current living space. What were your primary considerations? Were you more concerned with proximity to your workplace or neighborhood safety? Did you want an urban or suburban lifestyle?

How we choose our residential living space is similar to the way a serial entrepreneur or franchisor selects his or her next business location. It’s all about the relationship between the available geographic space and its constituents, rather, the potential customers.

But when you’re investing thousands of dollars of your own money to open a new location, you might want to consider more than just urban versus suburban lifestyles and how close you are to the best schools in town.

Or do you?

Well, it depends. Regardless of the economic, demographic or geographic success indicators for a franchise, a key step in the development process is market analysis. Territory mapping software can be very helpful in analyzing, processing and aggregating data that otherwise would be mind-numbingly difficult to interpret if left in an Excel spreadsheet.

Tetrad, Geometrx, Microsoft MapPoint, Alteryx, Maptitude and MapInfo Professional are some useful territory mapping options we found for franchise mapping purposes. All use their own unique mix of geographical, mapping and demographic datasets to help business decision makers.

Tetrad uses PCensus, demographic and geographic data to help clients plan sites and evaluate/analyze market data.

• Measure trade area performance by comparing your business’ performance relative to local competition.
• Find new markets and opportunities
• Evaluate shopping centers
• Locate distribution centers and identify key facts about shipments
• Minimize transportation cost by changing geographical location of shipment centers
• Determine the positive or negative effects of relocation

Geometrx is a territory management tool. The software is designed to use Geometrx’s and the client’s datasets together to generate a view of current territories and suggestions on effective management options.

• Manage up to five territory hierarchies (from the national level to micro-geographical locations)
• Scenario tracking and management allows users to compare and contrast possible situations using Geometrx’s and the user’s datasets

Microsoft MapPoint uses map data to pinpoint relationships between data and geographical location, trends and opportunities.

• Good option for International franchisors as it has European datasets
• GPS sharing capabilities
• Ability to analyze local markets and your competitors

Alteryx thought of everything when they created their software. The business analysis tool is, like the other software profiled, to examine the meaningful connection between different sets of data.

• Math lover’s delight—user has access to simple and complex mathematical formulas and functions (if/then statements, spatial manipulations, numeric conversions, etc.)
• Access to financial metrics, measurements and statistical data sets like net present value (NPV) and internal rates of return (NRR).
• Analysis and mapping of trade areas using census data and standard geographical limitations like county lines and zip codes.
• Geographic news search (using MetaCarta’s library)

Maptitude uses data from the census, core based statistical areas (CBSAs), counties, zip codes and other geographical limitations.

• International capabilities make Maptitude a great option for franchisors expanding into non-U.S. territories.
• Create and edit maps, analyze geographical data and connect to corporate data resources that offered free of charge on Maptitude’s website. The software supports over 50 file types and 100 GIS formats.

MapInfo Professional is a Windows-based mapping and geographical analysis application designed to examine the relationships between data and geography.

• MapInfo Pro allows users to manage location-based assets
• Gain an understanding of markets
• Discover trends
• Create custom maps.