What is ESRI Business Analyst?

ESRI Business Analyst has three key purposes. First, it enables detailed, justifiable recommendations on where to locate, remodel, expand, or consolidate a business. Second, through the use of customer profiling and market analysis, it can help you determine the best areas to find new customers and tune marketing messages to individual market segments. Third, it enables sales and operational teams to maximize efficiency by automatically balancing and optimizing their territories.

Through the use of powerful geospatial analysis tools and workflows, Business Analyst Desktop allows you to perform detailed analyses of customers and sales in combination with a wealth of up-to-date demographic, consumer spending, market segmentation, and business data provided by ESRI. The end result is a set of maps and comprehensive reports that are used to support and recommend business decisions.

With Business Analyst, you can take advantage of the following features:

• All data is available on your map at startup. You can use the MXDs provided with Business Analyst, bring in your own data, or build your own MXDs. A desktop shortcut is added when you install the product. Double-click the Business Analyst shortcut to begin working with the product.
• Data is apportioned in reports and analyses using a method of block point retrieval. When an analysis cuts across a demographic layer, Business Analyst considers the locations of the block points inside that block group and allocates accordingly. You can customize the data aggregation methods by setting area thresholds and data layers.
• Map documents are organized and selectable using the ArcCatalog toolbar. ArcCatalog presents a list of all map documents created with thumbnail views of each, if desired.
• Business Analyst supports input from all ArcGIS data sources, such as shapefiles and geodatabases.
• You can create your own datasets or customize the Business Analyst dataset to use your own data rather than the provided standard demographic data. For example, this could be used to add your local school district boundaries or voting districts to data you have collected that is associated with those geographies.
• Business Analyst includes extensive data layers that are updated yearly. Base data includes demographic and consumer spending data from ESRI; aerial imagery using ArcGIS Online; streets from Tele Atlas North America; business locations from Infogroup; major shopping centers from the Directory of Major Malls (DMM); and an address point geocoder to locate your stores, customers, and competitors.
• Business Analyst is completely integrated into the ArcGIS 10 framework. This integration provides an environment for geoprocessing, modeling, and scripting including the dockable ArcToolbox window with a comprehensive set of tools for all Business Analyst capabilities. The integrated ModelBuilder geoprocessing application allows you to link geoprocessing operations together and build models interactively.
• Business Analyst also takes advantage of the dockable windows in ArcGIS 10 with the Business Analyst Window—where everyday tasks can be easily accessed.
• ArcCatalog is used extensively to organize Business Analyst data. Stores, customers, trade areas, and other Business Analyst data elements are now organized in the Catalog tree.
• Business Analyst includes ArcMap wizards that lead you through step-by-step procedures for creating and managing stores, customers, trade areas, and analysis.
• Reporting and report speed in Business Analyst have been vastly improved at each release. A custom report wizard is also included to help you build and share custom reports.
• You can save favorite demographic field lists for easy retrieval or quickly choose all the demographic fields in an existing report. This is helpful when creating repetitive tasks and analyses where specific variables are required.
• Batching capability is included, making it easier to work with multiple sites, trade areas, and customer files. This flexible batching capability will allow you to create trade areas, reports, and analyses one at a time or batched together as a group of work. You can then save time by letting the processing run overnight.
• Business Analyst Premium includes an additional set of tools and data to target customers, examine the merchandising mix, and find optimal locations for new store sites using ESRI's Tapestry neighborhood segmentation system.
• Routing and drive-time trade areas are based on the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension. A license to the full Network Analyst extension is now included with Business Analyst. Additionally, the StreetMap drive-time engine has been added to quickly produce drive times.
• Included in Business Analyst as a separate drop-down toolbar is Territory Design for ArcGIS. This is a powerful application to help businesses design, balance, and modify sales territories, service areas, or distribution zones.

Business Analyst is an extension built for use with ArcGIS and can be used with ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo. These components are included in the Business Analyst package:

• ESRI Business Analyst extension software—Provides tools for mapping, analysis, and managing work.
• Data from industry-leading vendors—Provides nationwide demographic, business listing, and shopping center data.
• Tele Atlas Dynamap/Transportation map data—Provides basemaps and U.S. national street network.
• Geocoding service—Takes your customer or store addresses and locates them on a map.
• ArcGIS Network Analyst extension—Provides drive-time/drive-distance analysis and routing capability. The full license to this extension is included with Business Analyst.