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How IMPACT by GMAP Can Inform Your Location Planning Decisions 

16th March 2023

The IMPACT Location Intelligence Tool can Ensure You Make Optimal Retail Location Planning Decisions

What is IMPACT?

IMPACT is our latest location intelligence tool at GMAP! We have developed this tool to allow our clients to create and run network strategy simulations in-house following a location planning project. 

IMPACT is an online web application which can be deployed globally and can run multi-action scenarios whereby numerous openings and closures can be modelled within the same scenario. Scenario results are calculated within minutes and are displayed in a report, which users can interact with or export as an image. This allows the modelled results to be imported into proposals, reports or presentations as required. Scenarios are automatically saved, so can be revisited later. 

Why Have GMAP Developed IMPACT? 

In a location planning project, GMAP calibrate a client-specific Spatial Interaction Model (SIM) working collaboratively with our clients to ensure the model is forecasting reliable sales forecasts. At the end of a project, we produce a recommended network, which we call an “Ideal Network Plan”. A project delivery typically provides recommendations or a target list as to where to locate new sites, where to close existing sites, and where to relocate under-performing sites. This often includes sales estimates amongst other variables. 

Whilst we have produced 000s of network plans to support many clients across multiple sectors over the past 30 years, we wanted to develop an easy-to-use, self-serve tool that supports our clients as they roll out their location planning strategies and ensures they make informed and objective decisions!

Which Location Planning Problems Can IMPACT Support You With?

IMPACT can be used to assess the pay-off of opening a new site, as well as the impact of closing or relocating an existing site. It can also run multi-action scenarios if you have several site openings or closures. For each of these scenarios, you can answer multiple questions within a few minutes: 

1. Opening a new site
  • What new sales would you gain? 
  • What sales would you cannibalise from neighbouring sites? 
  • How would the new site increase your network sales overall
2. Closing an existing site
  • What sales would you lose? 
  • What sales would be re-distributed to neighbouring sites? 
  • How much would the loss of this site affect the sales of your network overall?
3. Relocating an existing site
  • Would you increase your sales?
  • You would cannibalise on any of your neighbouring sites?
  • How would the new site location increase or decrease your overall network sales?
4. Competitor Activity
  • How will a competitor opening in the vicinity to your site affect your store performance?
  • How will a competitor closing a site near to yours impact your sales?

Is IMPACT Relevant to Your Business? 

No matter your sector, IMPACT could be relevant to you. Read the following case studies to see how IMPACT has helped clients across different sectors:
IMPACT - Automotive Case Study
IMPACT for an International 
Automotive Group
Enabling an international Automotive Group to self-serve scenarios to support them in optimising their dealer network >>
IMPACT - Retail Case Study
IMPACT for an International Clothing & Footwear Retailer
Supporting the site selection process for a Clothing & Footwear Retailer expanding their retail network internationally >>
Whilst GMAP are leaders in location planning for the automotive and retail sectors, we also specialise in a wide variety of different sectors including Leisure, Fuel Forecourt and Transport. If your retail operations consist of any physical customer-facing sites, our location intelligence expertise can help you! 

Could IMPACT Support Your Team? 

IMPACT could be used by sponsors across different areas of your business. For example, IMPACT could be used day to day by Network Planning Analysts to Acquisition Managers, to Insight Analysts, to Directors or those at Board-level who oversee large investment decisions. IMPACT is hosted through an online secure web-app, which means your team can login anywhere from an internet browser – no desktop applications required! 

The Benefits of IMPACT Location Intelligence

There are many benefits that IMPACT could provide you with, including: 

1. Objectivity and Consistency
IMPACT provides an objective measure and consistent approach for site feasibility. For example, a commercial property agent comes to you with 10 potential new sites. Yes, gut and feel might tell you one site is “the one”. However, where are the numbers? Is it based solely on the shops in the vicinity, or that the local population has a high rate of your target audience? With IMPACT, you could take these factors into account, but also many others depending what is built into your model. You could then add each of these sites in as individual scenarios. 

From this, you could take images out of the IMPACT Report which present the sales estimate for each site, as well as the sales impact to your overall network. You could show this in a meeting with your Board to justify your decision to open the store. In GMAP’s experience, we have found our clients reap great rewards from presenting objective sales estimates in a consistent way and IMPACT is a great way to help you do that!

2. Quantifying Impact
Obtaining an estimate of sales impact of a potential new site, closing a site or a new competitor’s site can be hard to obtain without using a model. Whilst you could say a new site looks like another one of your existing ones and therefore you could expect to perform in a similar way, there will always be differentiations in the catchment population or competitive mix or attractiveness of a destination that will affect your site performance. Furthermore, how would you quantify how individual sites would impact on each other, or how a competitor would impact your sites? IMPACT does all this for you in minutes to save you having to make assumptions that can cost you and your investments greatly. 

3. Be Reactive
Whilst a network planning project with GMAP can provide you with a ‘roadmap’ for expansion, circumstances can change. You may have to open certain sites earlier than the plan suggests whilst others take longer to build or find the right micro location for, or stores you never anticipated having to close may need to due to sky rocketing rents. IMPACT enables you to intuitively run scenarios without having to even send us an email. Our clients need for reactiveness is exactly why we developed IMPACT, so you can quickly get the numbers you need to make your decisions. 

4. Easy-to-Use
A key criterion in the development of IMPACT was ease-of-use. We wanted IMPACT to be intuitive and simple to run scenarios on to ensure any user could quickly start using IMPACT without having to undergo much training. This way, the tool can be picked up for use whenever it is needed without causing resource issues for our clients. 

5. GMAP Support
GMAP are always only a phone call or email away! We promise, you’ve not met a helpdesk more helpful than GMAP’s.  

Get In Touch

If you are interested in IMPACT or would like a quick demo to see whether this is the location planning tool you are missing, get in touch at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585.
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