Drilling Down on that Low Hanging, Open Kimono

The Drill Down
It’s 2015 and time for you to finally explore your business mapping options; especially in light of the shutdown of Microsoft MapPoint. We can make this transition easy for you. We really can. And if you’ve been following my business mapping blog a while you can tell my New Year’s resolution is to beat this dead horse – i.e. Map Business Online as a MapPoint alternative.

There’s a good sales reason for this. No one seems to know exactly how many MapPoint users there are out there but our best guess is it’s in the tens of thousands. And for business mapping software companies, this is what business talkers using business speak like to call “low hanging fruit.” So let’s go open kimono, drill down, and circle back on the subject so that at the end of the day we’ve generated more low hanging fruit.

The Fruit
If you’re using MapPoint for basic business mapping processes like customer mapping or prospect visualizations, sales territory mapping, or geographic market analysis, then Map Business Online can directly replace what you do with MapPoint. In fact, we’ll help you take it to the next level, which could be franchise mapping, finance analysis, or health care operations maps.

This means you can easily import spreadsheets in Excel format, text files, or other basic database files into Map Business Online. We’ve got YouTube videos and help documentation to help you achieve these imports quickly. Once you’ve pulled in your data you’ll be able to symbolize, segment, color code and total numeric data by administrative district (county, zip, etc.) You’ll find these Business Mapping Software applications easier than MapPoint, if our actual customer applications and feedback is any indication. We get multiple calls and emails hourly on replacing MapPoint. Visualization tools include various symbolization options, import your own symbols, and heat maps – which are way cool. And if you assign a unique ID column to your data you’ll be able to update changes in your imported data wicked fast – business speak for really fast.

Our Core Competency Thingy
Sales Territory Mapping is our strongest suit. That’s right, until you reach a price point north of $5000 per year or per install you just won’t find a better sales territory mapping software. Period. We own that market. So look forward to experiencing a much more advanced mapping tool than the one you’re used to in MapPoint. Much more advanced and much more intuitive – and with actual map data that is up-to-date.

If you have territories pre-assigned in a spreadsheet then import them and watch your territories easily take shape and color in your new mapping software. Or start from scratch, it doesn’t take long. Simply turn on a state, county or zip code layer, grab the polygon query tool and start grabbing selections of zip codes (because they are the most popular administrative district for territories) and build your new territory map. Save it as a map template for future work, or share your territory as a MapShare URL. Your map viewers don’t need to be subscribers to view your territory map.

Vertically Speaking
Market analysis means you can import your sales or prospect data, competitor locations, proposed store locations – whatever – and view that data on an accurate map. You’ll be able to add demographic data and color code those demographic files by administrative districts. Conduct drive time analysis from specific addresses to get a sense of the proximity of your stores to population centers or income densities. Pretty soon you’ll have that marketing map you could never quite get out of MapPoint making us even more than just a MapPoint alternative. Like many aspects of life, when something passes, better things are in store for you.

If you have questions about your application of MapPoint and whether or not it is doable in MapBusinessOnline.com simply ask us by email or phone. We are here to help and will do our best to respond quickly. We can always set up a web demo, we’ll even use your own business data (if that’s allowed) to examine Map Business Online’s relevance to your organization. And if you can correctly identify the number of business speak phrases used in this blog, I’ll give you an hour of free training.

At the End of the Blog
So let’s ‘dial it up a notch’ and start improving your business mapping core competencies by getting you to drink the Kool-Aid of Map Business Online so at the end of the day, you rock. We’re really bleeding edge (that’s good right?).

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Let a digital map help you learn about your business

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035, (207) 939-6866

MapPoint users – please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, g2crowd

About Geoffrey Ives

Geoffrey Ives lives and works in southwestern Maine. He grew up in Rockport, MA and graduated from Colby College. Located in Maine since 1986, Geoff joined DeLorme Publishing in the late 1990's and has since logged twenty-five years in the geospatial software industry. In addition to business mapping, he enjoys playing classical & jazz piano, gardening, and taking walks in the Maine mountains with his Yorkshire Terrier named Skye.
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