Location has a huge impact on every aspect of business - where do your customers live and work? What is the total number of employees within a certain category? What is the total number of businesses in a category? With data increasingly becoming an organisation's most valuable asset, Spatial Technologies in collaboration with BMR, provides a flexible, multipurpose foundation with the appropriate integrity for critical business use.

Spatial Technologies is committed to offering total spatial solutions, which is achieved through the establishment of quality data products. Spatial Technologies and BMR have identified a need and offers a new dimension to data - business counts which have been geo-coded by suburb and place name throughout South Africa (over 60 000 records).

The spatially enhanced business counts database combined with MapInfo technology opens the door to many new applications aimed at providing organisations with both competitive and business advantages. The database comprises eight modules, which are classified as Business Services; Construction; Exporters; Hotels and Guesthouses; Importers; Manufacturers; Mines; and Wholesalers and Retailers.

Each record in the database has a standard industrial classification (SIC) code that is a description of the main activity of each company. This allows the user to create maps on the fly, showing the total count per suburb of, for example, accountants; law firms; architects; land surveyors; market research companies or even data processing companies. There are over 550 SIC codes to choose from.

In addition, the size of companies can be measured. In some cases - such as with wholesalers and retailers, and construction, there is an employment size group (ESG) which provides an indication of the total number of employees per sector, per suburb. In other cases, more meaningful ways of measuring the company size have been used. Examples of this include hotels and guesthouses where an indication of the total number of beds has been provided; or exporters where an indication of the annual free on board (FOB) values have been provided.

The sectors which are covered by the dataset include (but are not confined to) agriculture; husbandry; mining; manufacture of both non-consumable and consumable goods; printing and publishing; chemical plants and processing; metal; transport; motor vehicles; machinery; jewellery; construction; tobacco; retail; insurance; equipment rental and even sporting activities.

For more information contact Alan Ellis, Spatial Technologies, 011 807 3807, alane@spatial.co.za