14 August 2013
South African mapping firm mapIT has released a location-based business intelligence application, MarketScope, based on Statistics South Africa’s census 2011 data, as a tool to improve government and business planning.
The app has incorporated data for race, gender, age, income, education, language, employment status, household size and total population within local and district municipal boundaries.
“This inclusion of the census data offers enterprise and government a comprehensive geo-spatial snapshot of their operations to allow planning, benchmarking and market analyses. It’s a virtual replication of reality,” mapIT managing director, Etienne Louw, said in a statement on Monday.
MarketScope also comes standard with navigation service provider TomTom’s mapping data to ensure accurate analysis and benchmarking.
TomTom has developed the most extensive mapping database in the world and includes over 10-million kilometres of roads and 2-million points of interest in Africa.
“MarketScope’s four-module application geo-codes, imports, integrates and overlays proprietary information – customer, store, supplier and logistical data and third-party demographic research including census 2011 – onto a digital map for analysis and display in a geo-spatial context,” mapIT said.
The four modules are client centric information, router, locator and spatial analyser.
MarketScope also provides “decision-makers the ability to compare and contrast company data on consumers, sales patterns and customer trends with the latest census 2011 data and demographic information such as Living Standards Measures”, according to mapIT.
Another feature of the app is the drive time analysis, which determines a drive time zone – the distance travelled through a road network in the given time.
“The tool selects a driving time according to the nature of a business and how much time people would probably be willing to spend in their cars to get to this location,” the company said.
SAinfo reporter
