MAINFEATURE
Maps showing distribution of wealth, the location of Edinburgh’s student populations and a market comparison of two cities
Cheshire (Altrincham and Wilmslow hold levels of disposable income 56 per cent and 47 per cent higher than the national average respectively), the north Yorkshire area around Harrogate, and Aberdeen. In recent years, the home care services industry has expanded rapidly. Coastal retirement towns, therefore, can be extremely profitable for these types of businesses. They do, however, hold the greatest level of competition.
When choosing key regions for expansion, it is advisable to research the local market conditions and especially the location of your competition. By doing this you can discover where the highest concentrations are and decide whether you want to avoid rival businesses or look to take market share from them.
Atlas Mapping, creators of the web-based territory management system ‘My Franchise Atlas’, also provide site-planning consultation services to franchisors. Their services are aimed at franchises that wish to maximise their revenue potential through improved territory structures and streamlined recruitment and management processes.
My Franchise Atlas takes information such as territories, sites, franchisees, postcode boundaries and demographic data and displays it on a Google Map background. Stuart Lee, sales and marketing director, says: “This is the modern approach to gaining visualisation of the status of a territory network and sharing market information with prospective franchisees.” Indeed, managing territories in this format allows franchisors to
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bring departments closer together and improve the franchisee recruitment process. Stuart continues: “Being able to display the territories to franchisees makes the recruitment and management of territories more transparent. This improves franchisee confidence in the brand, as having access to crucial market information can aid them with business planning.”
“This is the modern approach to sharing market information with prospective franchisees”
EweMove.com identify which territories are
currently taken, under offer and available by using a colour-coded system that prospective franchisees can access, plotting sites allows Granite Transformations to efficiently deal with customer enquiries and Bluebird Care need to understand how government administration (Local Authority) boundaries lay in relation to postal geography, which they can then reference when tendering care contracts. It is clear that the Atlas Mapping territory planning services are useful to a wide range of franchisors, from those looking to get their new brand off to a good start to larger organisations that need to review network performance. Many franchisees find that the territories
awarded in the early stages of franchising are too large to service and leave gaps between
Source: Atlas Mapping
territories that are difficult to sell. Territory mapping can eliminate these problems, thereby providing businesses with a solid structure on which to build. Monitoring territories ensures that awarded areas are fully utilised and also eradicates the risk of losing a substantial amount of business when neighbouring territories are sold. For developed brands with mature networks, Atlas Mapping analyse the performance of franchisees, measuring market penetration and identifying areas they could explore in order to obtain more business. As a franchisor, it is important to be armed
with a real understanding of the commercial opportunity each franchisee covers in order to make genuine comparisons between performances. Demographic data such as wealth distribution, average age and ethnicity is vital to this.
For example, Blackburn and Preston are
extremely similar in terms of size of population and number of households [as shown above], but the percentage representation of Asian ethnicity, for example, is remarkably different. Ethnicity may not have an effect on all products and services but the point is that the markets do have some differences. Spotting the key attributes of the area relevant to the business is vital and franchisors must realise that not all territories hold an equal level of potential. Stuart explains: “At Atlas Mapping, we evaluate a franchisee on more than just their turnover. We believe this can provide unfair representations of franchisee performance – many true performance indicators are often missed.” n
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