Create a Competitor Map to Support Decision Making
Acme HVAC Controls, distributor of HVAC Control Devices, has a lot of competition. HVAC is a mature industry. The market is settled and tight. The installation and repair customers know what they require and they buy largely based on relationships and reliable part deliveries.
Still, Acme management smells opportunity. “We believe we can grow either through merger or through expansion into two new coverage areas.” Consequently, the company pulled their management team together for a business analysis session at headquarters. The time has come for high level decisions regarding the future of Acme HVAC Controls.
Problem: To adequately assess the HVAC market place Acme HVAC Controls needs to visualize exactly where all competitors are currently located and their general sales coverage areas. It would be helpful to view all current Acme customer locations (with sales values) as well as some of the more lucrative target accounts Acme hopes to win over through their expansion effort. In short, Acme requires a competitor map.
Over the past month, the President of Acme has gathered numerous datasets of information to support the planning meeting. Most of the data was already available through the IT Department and Sales Department:
- A current customer address dataset with columns for the last three year’s sales by account
- A list of potential target accounts by address – exported out of the CRM as a CSV file
Finally, the boss had a sales associate spend a morning on Google compiling an address dataset of competitors.
Solution: Find a low-cost, easy-to-use business mapping software and import the above noted location based datasets into a USA map view for color coding, symbolizing and analysis. Focus on the competitor locations looking for areas not saturated with distribution, and with labor demographics that support immediate hiring needs for the expansion.
How to Create a Competitor Map Using MapBusinessOnline
- Gather an address database or Excel spreadsheet of your key competitor locations. Include branch locations as well as headquarters. Arrange separate columns with headers for location data: Name, Address, City, State, and ZIP code.
- In the MapBusinessOnline master toolbar click the Plot Data on Map button
- Browse to your data and click Next. Verify location columns are accurately placed and adjust as necessary
- Choose Company Name or a similar assignment for the name column
- Assign columns of your choice to the five label flex field options
- Process the imported locations points to the map
- Color code points by clicking the Color Code with Symbols button
- Repeat the import process for additional datasets – Your company branch locations, customer address datasets, prospective customer address datasets
- Color code and/or symbolize various dataset for quick identification on the map
- Append information as appropriate to plotted point labels.
- At your discretion include background demographic analysis by administrative district (typically ZIP code)
- Share your competitor map with planning associates as required to secure feedback and ideas
- Share as an interactive web map through MBO MapShare
- Share as a static image file via email
- Share live MBO business mapping via web share services like Join.Me or Skype for Business
At the planning meeting Acme decision makers used their competitor map as a guide to establish five likely new locations for Acme branches. The competitor map served several specific purposes that helped drive the decision-making process forward:
- The competitor map made clear where customers and prospects were under served
- The competitor map showed definite areas of distribution saturation, in fact it seemed to suggest closing one existing warehouse location that had been under performing
- The map stimulated or inspired unexpected suggestions as the team noticed patterns they had not expected
- The map helped to establish next steps in the planning process including exploring possible locations for new branch locations
Your competitor map will make sense only to your business.
Thanks to business mapping software, Acme HVAC Controls is moving confidently into the future after solid decisions were made based in part on awareness of their competitors in their existing and future marketplace.
Learn How Our Customers are Succeeding with MapBusinessOnline
This leading North American reseller of hardware and software supports millions of businesses worldwide. We get regular calls from SHI representatives who need to offer a MapPoint replacement or to simply provide business mapping software for a corporate or government account. SHI customers include users of annual subscriptions for the USA and Canada as well as collaborative Team Editing subscriptions for corporate accounts.
Software House International (SHI)
"This software has been tremendously helpful in mapping out my company’s sales territories map. I have researched many other products, but no one came close to the ease of use of data customization options MapBusinessOnline provides. Also, their maps are extremely accurate and pleasing to the eye. Sales projections and territory expansions can be easily mapped out with this software. Most importantly, they provide free training and a vast number of video guides that have been extremely helpful. It is apparent that this company cares about their product and their customers. Really happy with it."
KC Cooley
Credit Manager
Crediauto Financial
"We've tried the REST now we are using the BEST. After searching and trying other mapping programs for our delivery operations team and finding that we just couldn't get all the features that we required, we finally found MapBusinessOnline. Not only did it have all the features we needed including Longitude/Latitude and optimizing delivery routes, but it provided us tons of other bells and whistles. MBO proved to be a superb tool for our operations team to create routes and territories with the click of a few buttons while also allowing our reporting team to make beautiful maps that help our executive team visualize the story the data was telling. We are using this for the 2nd year in a row and will be renewing when it is time again. We pride ourselves at offering cutting edge applications to our millions of readers and subscribers worldwide and love that MBO helps us stay ahead of the technology curve by continuing to update their product and features. The release of MBO for the Desktop was a great addition and only helps make using the product even easier. To the staff at MBO — Keep up the great work!"
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