The GIS business market is primarily focused on site selection/site comparison, market analysis for determining the best products or services to offer, analyzing competition, continuity planning, and supporting logistics and spatial supply chain logistics.

ESRI’s Business Analyst product suite is a complete line of GIS solutions for businesses.  It has three components:

• Business Analyst Online, a Web-based application that generates reports based on demographic, consumer spending, and business data and is used for site selection, customer profiling, and trade area analysis
• ArcGIS Business Analyst Desktop, which includes a complete package of geodemographic and street data and allows businesses to author and evaluate models, analysis, and predictive reports
• ArcGIS Business Analyst Server, which integrates workflows and allows publishing and sharing of models and analysis created with Business Analyst Desktop across an organization.

In addition to the Business Analyst product suite, ArcLogistics is a solution for optimizing routes and pick-up or delivery schedules, and helps organizations, regardless of their size, manage their vehicle fleet efficiently.

Organizations that have implemented the Business Analyst product suite and ArcLogistics have seen significant results. Many of the major Fortune 500 retailers in the United States use Business Analyst and ArcLogistics, including some of the largest retail chains, restaurant chains, and logistics/package delivery companies. These companies have seen an increased return on investment (ROI) due to time savings, reduction in fuel costs, improved customer service, increased store traffic, and a better understanding of demographics and market conditions.

The use of these solutions is growing fast, even in a down economy.  They are of significant interest to the commercial sector, but have also been enormously successful within local and state governments for selecting and evaluating sites for public facilities, economic development, and routing government workers and vehicle fleets.