Adding Data to Your Map

You can add tabular data of your customers and stores to your map. The Customer Setup and Store Setup wizards geocode your data and place it as points on your map. Whenever data is added to your map, it will be associated with the analysis extent that's active at the time. If the active analysis extent is a study area, the layer will be added to the group layer of that study area. You can change the analysis extent at any time using Set Analysis Extent on the Business Analyst menu.

Your tabular data can be in the form of a .dbf file, a comma- or tab-delimited .txt file, or an RDBMS. If it's an RDBMS, you must first bring the data into ArcGIS before you can set it up with a wizard.

To do this, click Add Data, click the Look in drop-down arrow, then click Database Connections. You can then choose the database connection you want and proceed with the wizard to finish adding the database to ArcMap. Only stores that fall within your study area are analyzed if you have set up a study area using the Create Study Area wizard and that study area is set as the analysis extent.

The Customer Setup and Store Setup wizards are identical for this task. The Customer Setup wizard will be used here to illustrate the steps.

Both the Customer Setup and Store Setup wizards contain the same geocoding dialog box that will geocode points on the map by Address/City/State/ZIP Code (optional). The more information you can provide, the better your geocoding results. If you don't have addresses in your database and will be geocoding by ZIP, click ZIP or some other database field in the Address drop-down menu and the ZIP drop-down menu on the geocoding dialog box. If your database contains latitude-longitude coordinates—meaning the data has already been geocoded or the coordinates have been obtained using a Global Positioning System (GPS)—click the File menu on the ArcMap main menu, point to Add Data, then click Add XY data to add the database to the map by latitude-longitude. You can then step through either the Customer Setup or Store Setup wizard using the Map-ready data option.

Geocoding by ZIP Code places the customer or store point at the center point (centroid) of the ZIP Code. Because of this, the point locations are less accurate than geocoding by address, city, and state, which gives an address range. However, using address, city, and state can still result in multiple points geocoded at one location because the customer file might contain names of all the people in a household.

Adding data using the Add Data button on the ArcMap toolbar

You can use the Add Data button on the ArcMap toolbar to add data to your map. Click Add Data, browse to the data you want to add, then click Add. The data is added to the table of contents, but you'll still have to geocode the data's attribute table on the map to make it available for customer or store setup. This is done using in ArcMap by clicking File, pointing to Add Data, pointing to Geocoding, then clicking Geocode Addresses. After geocoding the database, you'll be able to use it in either the Customer Setup or Store Setup wizard.