Vendor:
ESRI, Inc.
380 New York Street,
Redlands, CA 92373
Tel: 1-800-970-0033
http://www.esri.com

Introduction
The two things that have been the major factors in Business Geographics software have always been the cost and the ease of use. BusinessMAP 3.5 addresses both of these issues with a reasonable priced, high value product, which everyone can use.

The value begins with the data supplied as it is exceptional both in quality (GDT Streets & boundary files), and in the amount of data. Why this is important, is not only in how much detail you can map, but that the quality of the output is at a professional level, allowing you to convey ideas, market conditions and concepts with first rate maps. This ability also includes the ability to include imagery, DEMs and topographic layers.

This product is designed for everyone in business, marketing/sales, the retail industry, energy & utilities, finance and health care and it integrates with adjacent business applications. One of the key features is the ability to link directly from contact management software (ACT, Excel, Goldmine, Outlook and others) so that customers, contacts, stores or competition can be mapped or located directly from those products.

It is also an international product as datasets are available for Europe and Canada.

BusinessMAP 3.5 is a true 21st century product in that it can link directly to web services (web service add-ons include Maptech and ESRI BIS). Maps, data, and routing directions can also be moved to a Palm device, so BusinessMAP 3.5 positions your desktop between the web and your PDA.

A very nice addition are the included demonstration videos for showing you the “How tos” of the product. There is also a very useful sample applications guide with over 20 examples ranging from targeted mailings to analyzing and balancing territories.

Product Scope
The product scope is to provide a mapping platform for the majority of business users, who need to easily be able to create professional quality maps and reports. These may include showing market conditions, competition, territories, routing and also access web services for even more comprehensive demographic reports and maps. Maps, routes and other information can be portable via your PDA. The professional quality output is designed to accommodate sizes from day planners to E Size (36” by 48”) wall maps.

BusinessMAP 3.5 has direct links to standard business applications (via an icon on their toolbars) for contact management, reading data directly from these external sources, and mapping it if it contains a geographic component.

It will also read shapefiles, most graphic formats, Microsoft Excel and Access, dBase®, and other common data files. This avoids the need to convert your data to dbf, or text formats before it can be used in BusinessMAP.

With the ability to add as layers aerial photos, digital elevation maps and topographic maps, the hard copy output can be rich and detailed.

Reporting is done through Microsoft Office products (via templates) so that reports can be edited or created in products that the user is already familiar with.

GPS is supported for routing, finding what’s nearby or capturing points.

The design scope of BusinessMAP 3.5 is to provide an affordable mapping product that is bundled with high quality data, has exceptional output quality, and is extendable in terms of the available additional data. It is a mapping product that is easy to use and is designed to work with the software you are currently using.

Supplied Data
The bundled data is quite extensive for a product at this price point. It also allows you to begin producing maps and reports as soon as the software is loaded. Additional data bundles are also available at reasonable cost. This is a listing of what comes with BusinessMAP 3.5.

• GDT Dynamap 2000®/Transportation – High quality street and boundary files.
• Dun & Bradstreet’s 16 million business listings – you can search through this database by SIC code, business name, address, city, state, ZIP Code, telephone number, even latitude/longitude, then select and map.
• Boundary files to the Census Track level, with 500 current demographics variables, including estimates and projections.
• Included are 5 digit ZIP Code boundaries (29,785 records) with population (estimates and projections), income, age and ethnicity.
• Consumer expenditure data at the state and county levels.

Also available (at additional cost) are Orthographic Aerial Photos, Topographic Maps, Digital Elevation Maps for over 150 cities as well as European and Canadian data.
All of the add-on image files are registered so they line up with the existing street, highway and boundary files. BusinessMAP 3.5 also reads geo-referenced raster files. BusinessMAP 3.5 directly links to ESRI BIS web services (http://www.esribis.com/special/bmap/index.html) for drive time, ring studies or free form polygon demographics reports and maps

Maptech provides as a web service, (http://www.info.maptech.com/BusinessMAP) aerial photos and topographic maps. These files load and display automatically (when the service is subscribed to) from the web at the appropriate zoom level.

Even more data can be acquired from 3rd parties, because BusinessMAP 3.5 reads shape files, so if you have or obtain data in this format, it will read right in.

Functionality
BusinessMAP 3.5 has all of the expected functionality. Zoom, pan, select by pointing, circle, oval, square, rectangle or polygon. It does thematic mapping (colors, patterns and transparent fills), which are supported both for demographic or other variables and for territories, including sub-territories. There is a vast library of symbols and the users can even add their own.

There is an unusual amount of flexibility in terms of the print output, as even envelopes and index cards are supported.

Key functional areas

Direct Links to ACT, Excel, Goldmine, Outlook – there is an icon automatically placed on the tool bar of these products which lets you launch BusinessMAP 3.5 from within those products, it will look for a geographic component and will address match or geocode (if they have a lat/long) your customer records, and place them on a map. Now that they are in a map, you can search using the spatial query tools. You can also send these records back to the original application for mail merge.

Thematic Maps – Standard thematic maps are supported, mapping by variable using colors or patterns. What is very useful is the ability to control the amount of transparent fill. If you have color filled a polygon, you can adjust the transparency so you can see what is underneath. Thematic maps work very will with relief maps showing topography, so that natural barriers, for example, stand out.

Standard thematic map

Thematic map with transparent topographic map

Thematic Map integrated with Shaded Relief Image

These combinations of thematic maps, relief layers and transparency let you create exceptional maps.

Territories – Multi-level territories are supported and there is a wizard for balancing territories. Territories are created from existing geographies (boundaries) and areas can be merged to form territories across polygons.

U.S. as geographic territories

U.S. merging western territories and shading eastern territories

Reporting – Reports are created using a set of templates for Microsoft Office products, Word, Excel and Power Point. There are two categories of reports, simple and complex. You can also create your own templates using “mark-ups” in Excel, Word or PowerPoint, or use XML and VB script. Exiting templates can be edited so you can include things like your logo in the header, or use the drawing tools to add lines and shading for color. The simple reports choice creates a map and a list of demographic (or other) variables for selected geography(s). The user can select the geography, which Office program the output will go to (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and the graphics file format (for the map) from eight different formats. The dialog looks like this;

Simple report dialog - Note you can select the Office program the report is going to, add a title, select the geography, the graphics format for the map and how the graphics for the map will appear – border or no border and if the legend is compacted or not.

There are also sets of complex templates that use macros for calculations and for creating charts that can be imbedded in the reports. Below is a listing of available complex report templates. These reports are ‘pre-packaged’ and are designed for a particular Office application.

• Automotive Aftermarket Expenditures
• Business Summary
• County market Profile
• Dealers’ Sales by Product
• Demographic Profile
• Disposable Income Profile by Census Tract
• Disposable Income Profile by ZIP Code
• Financial Expenditures
• Income Profile
• Medical Expenditures
• Net Worth Profile by Census Tract
• Net Worth Profile by ZIP Code
• Restaurant market Potential
• Sales and Per Capita Income by ZIP Code

Note that these reports could be used with maps and reports from the ESRI BIS web service.

Example report template (Excel)

Yellow and blue shading and blue lines added to customize this Microsoft Excel report.

Example Report - Word -- The Directions logo, yellow shading and the red line were added to customize the MS Word report.

Routing and directions – BusinessMAP performs street routing and creates driving directions. If you are a sales professional, or simply want to create the most efficient way to visit stores in a market, this feature will be very useful. In the example below, the start and finish points were created first, then randomly selected points in between. The user has the choice of creating an optimized route or a sequential stop route. If you want to publish the route to the web or to a Palm device, this functionality is “built in”; for the web, it will create the map with the legend and a list of driving directions all in an html document.

Optimized Route – with driving directions

Route on a Palm Device - This is a portion of the same route showing the first segment on a Palm device. As you progress along the route, you can select, via the arrows the next segment and instructions.

Find what is nearby – You can find what’s nearby a point, a city or any of the functions used in “locate”. An example might be from the Dunn and Bradstreet business listings database, where you can find businesses located within a given radius around a point. You might have a potential retail location and want to know how many competitors are nearby or how many customers are nearby your office.

What’s Nearby - This is a map showing a radius of the businesses surrounding an intersection.

Map Output in various sizes – You can print up to E size (36” by 48”) for making wall size maps. This is an example of a Day Runner (desk) output. Most standard paper sizes are supported including European sizes.

Map output for Day Runner – day timer This map of Coronado Island (San Diego) is formatted so it fits the pre-punched page format for this day-timer. One of the standard output choices.

Output can also be done as a mosaic, using your standard printer to create the map in pieces. Mosaics can be done using all of the supported paper sizes

Web links – The link to ESRI BIS is built in to BusinessMAP 3.5, and there is an included trial subscription for demographic reports. The interface is very easy to use and this feature provides traditional demographic map reports. The ESRI BIS link supports drive times, rings and free form polygons. You can even upload a .dbf file of multiple locations to create multiple maps and reports.

• http://www.esribis.com/special/bmap/index.html
• http://www.info.maptech.com/BusinessMAP - Maptech is a source of aerial photos and topographic maps. As a subscription, these files can be automatically integrated into BusinessMAP 3.5.

This is an example of a Maptech aerial; it was automatically loaded when I reached an appropriate zoom level on the map.(Harvard University and vicinity). Note that the streets line up with the aerial photo.

European Data – International data is becoming more and more important to business. BusinessMAP 3.5 provides a seamless way to move to different parts of the world via the add-on European and Canadian datasets. This is an example of the European data coverage.

European data coverage map – covered countries are in red – Western Europe Countries covered (red)

Austria	Luxembourg
Andorra	Liechtenstein
Belgium	Monaco
Switzerland	Holland
Deutschland	Norway
Denmark	Portugal & Azores
Spain	San Marino
France	Sweden
United Kingdom	Vatican City
Italy

Countries not covered (yellow)Bosnia & Herzegovina Romania

Croatia	Ukraine
Bosnia & Herzegovina	Romania
Greece	Lithuania
Albania	Belarus
Yugoslavia	Russia
Macedonia	Finland
Czech Republic	Gibraltar
Slovenia	Ireland
Hungary	Poland
Slovakia	Moldova
Bulgaria	Latvia
Turkey	Estonia

This map was made with European data. Note even the Azores Islands are covered down to the street level

The countries shaded in red contain street files, city limits, postal codes, provinces, points of interest, and all of the locate functions are carried over from North American data. You can address match in 21,791 locations (cities and towns) in Western Europe (red).

10 Downing Street, address matched

Note the map quality and the points of interest

The Grand Casino in Monte Carlo – Street level maps in small communities

Conclusion
BusinessMAP 3.5 has done a very good job of solving the issues of cost and ease of use in a desktop mapping product. It comes complete with a very robust amount of high quality data and also has built-in links to the web and your PDA. With the additional data support of aerial photographs, topographic maps, and international data BusinessMap is a very comprehensive software solution.

Also very useful is the reporting mechanism using standard MS Office products providing a level of user flexibility that is not normally seen at this price point, or in other mapping products.

Finally, the hard copy output is both professional in quality and offers unique flexibility by including the ability to print pages for your day timer, to wall maps, or even mosaics as well as additional formats.

Please see http://www.esri.com/software/busmap3/index.html for more details.