Quantifying Location Opportunities

• Examining customer data and performing Trade Area Analysis to determine historical catchment and penetration patterns
• Developing estimates of daytime and residential demand by obtaining local Demographics, Traffic Estimates and plans of local planning agencies
• Performing competitive analysis by obtaining competitor lists, researching and performing secret shopper activity with the most prominent competitors
• Developing what-if analysis to indicate the likely outcomes of different location moves (new locations, refurbs, closures, relocations …) as a product of geographic catchment, competition, facility offerings and surrounding demographics

Outcomes of our work effort are better understandings of the geographic market areas surrounding brand locations, with data describing the demographics around each site, and descriptions of their purchasing activity.  Our studies provide a basis for interpreting minimum and maximum operating potentials, with guidelines for configuring individual branches that can optimize their success.

Developing Decision Support Data

• Web or Field Research – We perform web research and site visit as relate to interests or concerns of our clients to collect both high-level and detailed data points that affect pricing, programming, marketing, staffing or other operational changes
• Web-Based Surveys – We design and execute high-volume automated surveys as well as smaller custom surveys to measure the quantitative and qualitative views of customers, key partners and other stakeholders whose opinion is important to our clients
• Facilitating Focus Groups – We arrange sessions to collect follow-up information or opinions on topics surfacing from survey activities
• Screen-scraping – for situations where large volumes of web-based data points can be useful, our team applies custom screen scraping techniques to build databases that position our client to better grasp the state and opportunities within their markets,
• Public and 3^rd party database development – we build databases from classical public (government) and private sources to help our clients synthesize the many datapoints that can affect their operational decisions
• Interpreting the voice of the Community by organizing reports and graphics based on survey responses, summarizing major findings and [when invited] issuing business recommendations based on the findings

Outcomes of this effort are fuller understandings of issues and opportunities from the consumer standpoint, with better likelihoods of considering all the factors that can affect outcomes from operational changes.

Interpreting Market Data

• We evaluate data and participate in our clients’ Network Strategy discussions and help to build consensus and establish strategies for retail networks, with ongoing advice per new site, relocation, and closure opportunities.
• Pricing – our team offers experience interpreting market data to advice shifts in pricing (including fee levels, bundles, billing methods …)
• Programming and Merchandising – we organize data to interpret the opportunities for customizing our clients’ programs and merchandise offerings, with techniques to advise on both general brand and site-specific changes
• Marketing – Having contributed to many different classical, digital, and automated marketing programs, we can quickly contribute views on marketing strategy and help to organize marketing programs to ensure their marketing execution is complete

Support in this area provides clients with access to Sextant’s senior personnel for ad-hoc discussion on strategic decisions, as well as access to experienced personnel for ad-hoc research and analysis as needed to fortify our clients’ understandings of the challenges, opportunities, and tactical demands inherent to various business options, technologies and/or potential operational changes.

Developing Web-based Decision Support and Tracking KPIs

• Sextant offers powerful decision support platforms based on our data profiling and geographic analysis technologies

• Our IDEAS system allows our clients with a variety of reports to track key performance indicators about their organization, which drill down features to examine each and every location and line of business within their operations.
• Our Profiling system allows our clients with a variety of reports to understand and build personas reflects the different consumer segments within their customer base.
• Our systems automatically load and integrate recurring data feeds into web-based data systems; where we host and maintaining a secure website through which resources can access a wide variety of reports and dashboards
• We publish secure Cloud-based Reports to websites for key stakeholders to access via laptop and mobile devices and sending notifications to clients as key data signals are encountered; setting up automated logic to detect noteworthy data conditions that could be proactively communicated to personnel via SMS or email as they are identified

Outcomes of web-based dashboards are faster information distribution, enhanced stakeholder engagement, and better-informed downstream discussions among stakeholders as strategic and operational changes are considered.  Notably, Sextant’s dashboards can be arranged with privilege-level security, such that individual users can be set up with selected access to data.  As a result, information available to executives can be arranged to touch a wider number of topics than to staff, and information arranged for individuals within client organizations can be set up to include more detailed than available to “outside” stakeholders (such as business partners, customers, or the inquiring public