April 22, 2010
Savannah Delivers Critical Data to Prospective Businesses
Economic Development Web Site Enhanced with Comprehensive Demographics through Esri Business Analyst Online
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Images for Publication
This 45-minute drive time around a large industrial site indicates the labor-draw area. |
Redlands, California—The Savannah Economic Development Authority's (SEDA) online Property Search map (availableproperty.seda.org) now gives business leaders direct access to extensive demographic, consumer spending, and business information through a customized version of Esri Business Analyst Online (BAO). Esri business partner BinaryBus, Ltd., implemented the solution using the BAO API to give people considering opportunities in Savannah, Georgia, the ability to create a variety of free reports including income, age, traffic, and expenditure profiles. Visitors to the site can also access neighborhood descriptions that provide information about education, types of housing units (owner-occupied, rental, vacant), employment status, and more.
"It saves us a lot of time," said Amanda Taylor, project manager, SEDA. "It's a quicker, more efficient way to give people the information they need to understand the economic landscape and possibilities in Savannah. And they love being able to go to the site and do this research for themselves."
Prior to expanding the Property Search map application, SEDA provided census data for Chatham County on the Web site and purchased individual BAO reports for interested businesses. Now that BAO is integrated into the Web site, visitors have immediate access to critical demographic data for Chatham County and beyond, which helps them accurately assess the labor market and customers around the Savannah region.
"There's no way we would have been able to buy the data for the 11 surrounding counties that make up our labor draw area," noted Taylor. "It used to be that when a site visitor searched outside a 10-mile radius of a property, it would fall outside of the county lines and skew the results. In terms of accuracy, the improvement is huge."
To learn more about BAO and the BAO API, visit www.esri.com/ba.
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Emily Vines, Esri
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