What is Business Location Planning and why it matters?
If you’re a business thinking about opening new branches or relocating your premises, how do you go about planning the right locations for your customers and staff?
At Tech4T we specialise in helping businesses and other organisations find the perfect places, so we’re going to explain here why Business Location Planning is important and what it covers.
Let’s start by first stating the obvious – many businesses and organisations relocate their premises or open new branches or offices not based on intelligence and hard data, but instead on guesswork and assumptions. Quite often, the business leaders assume a particular area will be right for them because of reasons such as it appears busy, or because other similar businesses are nearby, or just because they know the area well.
But as has been proved time and time again, none of these factors guarantee that a new shop or restaurant or even a school will succeed, or that a new headquarters will be able to easily attract the staff it needs.
Business Location Planning removes this risk through the use of data analysis and territory mapping software to make intelligence-based decisions on which locations will perform the best and deliver the results required.
Advanced location intelligence systems like Tech4T’s Territory Runner system use interactive maps to make it easy for businesses or organisations to see – at a high or granular level – information most relevant to them.
This can include population and demographics data, local and regional transport links, and even the location of competitors in the area.
Even factors such as car parking, the profiles of potential customers, and whether there are businesses or other elements that pull people into a particular area can be included, so business owners can precisely select which locations to focus on and which to avoid.
The systems can also show which areas are underserved and present an opportunity and whether there will be any overlap with the business’s own branches (leading to sales cannibalisation) or their competitors.
And it’s a fact that organisations and businesses that take an intelligence-led approach to planning their locations do far better than those that don’t.
They are able to benchmark their performance against the true sales potential in an area, ensure they are locating their branches in the optimum location to maximise sales, and understand the factors that matter the most to them so these can be replicated across their other sites.
And for business headquarters, schools, and other public sector organisations, decision makers know whether they will be able to attract the staff they need, that these employees can easily travel to and from the premises, and what their catchment area actually is.
Business Location Planning has enabled businesses and organisations from fast-food chains to local and national authorities make the right location planning decisions.
So if you’re thinking about relocating your business or opening up a new branch, or even planning the location of a new public service, consider talking to specialists about location intelligence systems that will help you find the perfect places.
As Sajad Hussain, Managing Director of fast-food chain Chickano’s said: “This software maps out territories intelligently throughout the UK, displays them clearly on screen and thus greatly enhances our presentations.
“Other key benefits include its ability to visually plot key data such as attractors and competitors. The software also displays relevant demographic data tables all on the same screen.
“Our Tech4T solution has become an essential tool for our sales team who have already tripled their first-year sales target.”
