Territory, PMA and Franchise area custom mapping.
Mostly, businesses contract out this kind of work to specialists like us. The following deals with considerations for this typical approach.
Some individuals however, prefer to undertake the work in-house. It is achievable, but it can be quite involved. Most of us use an accountant to prepare our tax returns because we don’t want to learn the ins and outs ourselves, so it usually is with territory mapping. If you do want to DIY, you’ll need to budget for digital mapping software (see our quick guide) in addition to the digital postcode, or other geography, required regardless.
Every map or map series created for every business using a franchise or sales territory model, is unique. A common approach is for someone to ask a question along these lines: “We are interested in a franchise / territory map using postcodes, for State X, or a region from town A to town B; how much will it cost?” We can usually give a reasonable estimate how much the postcode data will cost (Organisational License of either the Standard Data Series, or Census Enhanced Data Series if you need to consider population demographics in your territories, or the budget Postal Area Census Enhanced alternative), but cannot possibly estimate how much time will be required, as such a question does not contain enough information about the persons specific requirements for us to offer a custom mapping estimate. Please take a little time to list your “must have” objectives, including:
- What information you want to balance territories with (e.g. geographic area; number of people regardless of age or gender, specific age / gender / ethnic group; some employment or income variable; or any of the many alternatives – default MapMakers Census Enhanced data field list is here).
- How many territories you are aiming for or what the target variable for each is.
- Whether separate branches of the same postcode or other base spatial unit must be contained in only one territory or can be allocated to several.
- Whether a postcode or other spatial unit must remain entire or whether you are prepared to split them to meet a specific outcome (the notes and illustrations on the Postcode page may be helpful).
- Whether territories can cross the borders of more than one State or Territory.
- What size map(s) you require.
- Whether you want a single summary map for your entire area of interest, or individual maps for each territory as well / instead of, they are created after the main territory definition exercise is completed.
- You may already have your territories defined in-house, but now wish to visualise them in map form. We can do so. Simply supply a copy of your Territory / PMA etc spreadsheet / database table(s) (see this important note on format, it includes a link to a basic format template spreadsheet), advise us of your preferred output format(s) and we’ll do the rest!
- With Smart devices everywhere, we can create your territories to upload to a smart device. This takes less time than making an actual “map” so is a lot cheaper. It also solves the age old problem of “disputing neighboring franchisees” as everyone knows where they are relative to their own unique territory – in or out is no longer an issue! See more details here but here’s a quick screenshot.
That will be the least cost approach to getting a set of individual territory maps. If you have requested an estimate for territory mapping, sets of individual territory maps will not have been included, as we usually cannot know how many may be required at that stage, so please budget accordingly. Individual territory maps usually take between 15-30 minutes to produce, a file for a smart device takes about five minutes. - What naming system your territories should have (default is 1 through to “n”).
- Wording for title(s), a digital image of your logo if required, any specific wording for disclaimers or other corporate requirements.
Experience tells us most territory mapping exercises have a custom mapping time based component in the upper half of the typical range, so $1500 – $3000, while territory creation for several of the major States together or all Australia is almost always going to be more than this (time required is broadly related to number of territories required; nationwide coverage requiring just a few territories per state may be accomplished quite quickly for example), not including any spatial and other data which may be required (rarely a client will supply all / some of their own). Similarly, but not necessarily related to overall area, if there is substantial data editing and analysis required, such as the splitting of spatial units based on redistribution of variable(s), it can add significantly to the time required compared to territory creation using entire spatial units.
We perform a lot of territory mapping, so we can almost certainly get you where you wish to be in this respect, but please be prepared to work with us to ensure we are able to implement to your requirements – it will be an iterative process and you will most likely need to be involved at least in a reviewing capacity. A good territory map is often pivotal to an effective sales prospectus for a franchisor; generating such maps can sometimes be complex and time consuming and therefore costly. However such costs would almost always be incorporated in the franchise price and as such would be at least fully recoverable, so please budget appropriately for your territory mapping project. We have national territory maps per-configured for targets of both 300,000 and 400,000 total population, illustrated on the downloads page.