Postcode Analyst

How to Map Customer Locations by Postcode

Graticule's Postcode Analyst 3 software contains embedded digital postcode boundary maps, colour general maps and black and white maps of the UK. The software let you read a file of data exported from your contact address database and plot the location of your contacts by postcode on map overlays.  It enables you to map the location of each contact by a symbol, pin or icon.  It also enables you to create multiple maps, each representing variables which are related to a contact, such as sales by product or service, revenues, personal characteristics such as gender, age-group, frequency of purchase and other data in your files.  As you have usually got the date of purchases, you can create maps showing sales by month, quarter or year and interpret, analyse and compare them to infer the geographical distributions of contacts over time. 

Maps can portray a wide range of different types of geographical distributions such as your customers, outlets, suppliers, employees and other contacts.  You can create maps showing sales of product A and product B and interpret and analyse them. You can view the geographical distributions and reach of your business activities by product or service and changes in these over time.

What is a "Contact"?

A contact can be an individual or an organisation with an address in the UK:

• An individual might be an employee, client, customer, student, patient, service engineer or consultant;
• An organisation might be a business, school, university, hospital, medical practice, retail outlet, wholesale depot, shopping centre, cinema or charity.

Your contacts address database usually includes name, address, postcode and telephone number of a contact. It may include other data about a contact.  For example, a retail outlet might store records of its cusomters' purchases by product, service, date, type, value, frequency, revenue to date, profit, gender, age-group and other criteria. 

If you store data in a contact database for an organisation, business, school, college, university, hospital, medical practice, church or sports club with a postcode in the UK, you can use Postcode Analyst software for mapping your contacts by postcodes.  If you store additional data, you can create maps showing sales by date, product and so on. These are many different types of maps which you can create.

You extract data from your organisation's database for selected periods, such as a day, week,month, quarter or year.  You can create maps representing your data for selected periods.  You can plot or map locations by postcodes in the UK for  diverse purposes such as the illustration showing sales by black symbols for each coloured sales territory:

• customers by product, service, value of sale, frequency of purchases, gender, age or other criterion;
• students in a school or college by measures of ability such as grades, sporting achievements or other criteria;
• clients of solicitors, accountants or business consultants;
• accessibility of an outlet by driving times from the residential address of all customers to an outlet.

You Create Maps using Your Own Data

Postcode Analyst software enables you to create multiple maps portraying your own data.  You interpret and analyse maps in relation to your intimate knowledge and experience of your organisations' activities.  For example, imagine you run a promotional campaign in a chosen geographical area over a month:

• Your can create maps using your own business data for the period before, during and after the campaign;
• You can interpret, analyse and compare these maps on screen with your knowledge of sales revenues and other business data;
• You can combine your knowledge of a sales and marketing campaign to interpret and analyse maps and assess the impact of the campaign in relation to its objectives, costs and economic and other benefits for your business.
• You can create maps with a local, regional or national focus to give you the level of detail which you require for your  business.
• You can create quantitative or thematic maps showing the number of sales by postcode zones such as areas, districts or sectors.
• You can create "sales territories" by amalgamating postcode zones, giving them a distinct colour, label and capturing sales statistics by territories;
• You can store the maps and your interpretation of the outcome of the campaign and use it to inform and improve subsequent campaigns.

Postcode Analyst 3 software can provide insights into the geographical distribution of your business activities and changes in these over time.   Suchs insights can be valuable for informing business strategy, planning, sales and marketing by identiflying where most of your customers reside, hot-spots, clusters, gaps, market penetration, competition and targeting areas for marketing campaigns.

Embedded Colour Maps and Postcode Boundaries of UK

Postcode Analyst software has embedded colour raster maps at three different scales and vector maps of postcode boundaries in the UK.  Postcode area,  district and sector maps enable you to create maps with a map symbol, pin or icon showing the location of each customer by postcode centroid or statistical maps showing the total number of sales per postcode zone in a chosen period.  You can choose from a range of different shapes, sizes and colours of map symbols.  This enables you to map customers for different products or services, map different types of outlets such as your outlets and thse of  competitors.

Postcode Analyst enables you to create multiple maps and display, interpret and compare them making it easy to identify changes in the geographical distributions of your customers and to account for these changes.  You can find routes from a customer's home address to an outlet, compute off-peak driving times, driving distances or create an driving time or isochrone map about an outlet.  You can use these maps to determine population "catchment" for an outlet, target your marketing campaigns and save on costs.   As customer catchments of an outlet change continually, and in some cases dramatically, you can readily map, interpret and analyse the impact on your business and respond in the best way to stimulate sales.

Postcode Analyst software enables you to map and interpret the proximity of a customer to an outlet, patient to a medical consultant or student to a school.  If you require metric data, it enables you to determine straight-line distance or the driving distance by road in miles or off-peak driving times.  From these metrics, you can derive costs for a journey to work, school or college. You can create a spreadsheet driving distances from a school to each students's home address.

Optional Plugins to Extend Functionality or Map Accuracy

Several optional plugins for PostcodeAnalyst 3 software extend its functions, add data or its improve productivity. Plugins include:

• Postcode Unit Data UK plugin.  Plot the location of your contacts on maps by using the full postcode. This gives greater accuracy in mapping contact addresses such as home addresses, outlets or businesses. Up-to-date postcode unit data for the UK can be read into PostcodeAnalyst 3 Software.
• Telemappix database connectivity wizard plugin. Telemappix software gives you the capability to perform SQL queries over a network on a remote database and  select and download sets of data into PostcodeAnalyst software which displays the maps instantaneously on your screen.  The Telemappix wizard plugin is a productivity tool.  It gives you the capability to work faster, improve productively and work much more efficiently.  It can save a great deal of time.
• Route Calculator plugin.  Provides functions for route finding, for finding the shortest or fastest route by roads, driving distance by road and estimated off-peak driving time between any two postcodes in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. It is fast and gives a valuable set of results for route planning by road.  The result is a highlighted route on a map overlay, with distances in miles and kilometres and driving time in hours and minutes.
• Range Calculator plugin. Provides functions for mapping driving time by all roads about a selected starting point. The result is an isochrone map showing how far you can drive in selectable intervals such as 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 minutes.  Widely used for assessing the accessibility of a site or outlet or group of outlets. 
• GeoDemoGraphix plugin.  Enhances the statistical mapping options by including additional functions for statistical mapping such as pie-charts.

Graticule provides a free 24-hour trial of its Postcode Analyst 3 software.  Click on the tab, complete and submit the application form.  Our sales team will be in touch by telephone or email with instructions on how to download, install and licence a full working version of PostcodeAnalyst3 Great Britain software for your evaluation.

We welcome your comments on what your think about the Postcode Analyst software. We shall provide a short questionnaire for you to complete and return by email. The information that you provide will inform product improvement.