One of the elements of keeping a franchise growing is selecting successful sites: Learn how to select a winning site location!!!
In an issue of Esri News for Business, a case study talks about how GIS and location intelligence is used, in-house, to keep the Great Harvest Bread Company, a franchise with 220 units in 43 states, growing and successful. Here is the article:
Keeping a Successful Franchise Growing
Great Harvest Bread Company, headquartered in Dillon, Montana, is known for its whole grain breads and baked goods. More than 220 bakeries in 43 states are run by franchisees dedicated to the company’s mission of providing delicious and nutrient-rich food products to local communities.
To ensure its franchisees are both happy and successful, Great Harvest takes special care to find locations with viable territories that support long-term business success. A combination of Esri Business Analyst software and Tapestry Segmentation data allows the company and franchisees to quickly perform detailed market analysis that identifies market gaps and profitable potential locations to open new bakeries. “The timeliness of the information we gather is of great help”, said Mike Ferretti with Great Harvest. “We can now very easily pull data together, perform the analysis we need, prepare a visual story map, and share that with decision makers in minutes. This lets us focus on the process of making the business successful rather than compiling and managing data.”
Profiling and ranking customers and franchise territories allows Great Harvest to better understand existing customers’ behaviors to serve them better. Using cloud-based software subscriptions to ArcGIS Online and Esri Business Analyst Online enables them to quickly analyze prospective locations anywhere and supplement desktop analyses with the most current data. This information is then shared throughout the organization using intuitive story maps and visualizations.
Esri’s Location Analytics platform enables franchises to understand how and where they can grow their businesses and help franchises thrive. Whether large or small, understanding and analyzing location-based data allows companies to build enduring, profitable relationships with their franchisees and customers.
