customer’s business. More than 150 U.S. clients ranging from retailers to restaurants to franchises use geoVue’s software, including Burlington Coat Factory, Walgreen and Dunkin’ Brands.

iPLAN adapts to changing market conditions, allowing clients to update plans over time and evaluate “what-if” scenarios as conditions change. Analyses that iPLAN performs include market potential to identify over- or under-performing locations, market capacity to estimate the ideal number of locations in a market and market opportunity to identify the best locations to maximize performance.

Users can run iPLAN to determine the ideal configuration of store sites within a market, assess the impact of adding, closing and relocating stores within a market, and evaluate merger and acquisition opportunities, says geoVue vice president of sales and marketing David Powell. “Unlike other solutions, iPLAN doesn’t just provide answers,” he says. “It opens up the whole modeling process, allowing analysts to insert their own judgment and experience into the equation.”

Streets vs. crow
Another unique feature: iPLAN charts distance from sites and simulates customer travel in a more realistic way by using the actual streets that potential customers will travel on, rather than the “as-the-crow-flies” model. The software can be deployed in different ways according to the differing needs of users. “A sophisticated research analyst would use the software in one way, while a real estate rep working in the field and needing quick access would use it in a different way,” Powell says.

The iPLAN Lynx platform can tie into the client company’s other applications. “There can be actual interoperation between iPLAN Lynx and other services,” Powell says. “For example, a company’s in-house sales forecasting process can be launched via the geoVue toolbar, and Google Earth or other aerial photos can be imported. “This communication with various services allows customers to leverage their existing software investments,” he says.

Although Pet Supermarkets has sited just two stores using geoVue applications so far, “we think this is a good package,” Holtz says. “Once we have established consistently good results with the software through more store locations, our goal is to use the software’s projections to meet our profit objectives of balancing rent to sales.”

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