Here is a reprint of site location considerations from www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide. Some of these factors need to be assessed during an on-site visit, but a majority of them can only be discovered using geospatial information analysis.
An important factor in selecting a location is that you keep a long-term perspective. Site selection can be a big investment. Choosing the right site now can avoid the costs of relocation in the future.
Here are some factors that you should consider in making your site decision:
Access to public transportation
Availability of inventory and supplies
Availability of utilities
Availability of workforce
Availability of physical plants
Community services and amenities
Cost of physical plant
Location of competitors
Parking facilities
Proximity to markets
Suitability of location for future expansion
Taxes
Traffic flow
Transportation facilities
Transportation rates
Wage scales in the locality
Author: Wayne Kocina
https://www.geowize.com GeoWize was founded in January of 2003 by Wayne Kocina, a seasoned industry veteran with nineteen years of experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Wayne has provided GIS services and consulted for such companies as Target, Big O Tires, Smiling Moose Deli, US West, Qwest, Unisys (France), Telebras (Brazil) & Telebras – CpQD, Idea Integration, & The City of Littleton.
We have managed $100M AM-FM-GIS development & deployment projects, vehicle tracking projects, spatial enterprise data projects, and hundreds of site prospecting, competitive intelligence, and market intelligence projects using ESRI’s ArcGIS and Business Analyst tools coupled with demographic, income, spending, market & spatial data from the world’s leading providers of this data. These are the same tools that many of the biggest and most successful retail business use to give them a real “competitive advantage” over their competitors.
Our mission: Provide better information for better decisions to small and middle sized business giving them the same competitive advantage that the “big guys” have!
