by James Killick
For those of you hankering for the latest and greatest version of our desktop product ... ESRI Business Analyst desktop 9.3.1 is now shipping! :-)
If you're waiting on the Segmentation Module, that's not far behind: we should be going gold today, which means the Segmentation Module should be shipping in about two weeks...
This new release of the product provides significant performance and productivity improvements as well as access to the updated ESRI demographic and business data for 2009/14.
Highlights of this new release include:
- ESRI Data for 2009/14: enables accurate analysis based on the recent economic downturn. Relative to prior data updates the 2009 data update is of particular value as it captures the unprecedented economic change.
- Attractive (& Fast) New Map Designs for even more professional presentations & reports. The new MXD for Business Analyst draws maps up to 4X faster than Business Analyst Desktop 9.3. This should provide a significant productivity improvement.
- Microsoft "Bing" Local Search embedded in Business Analyst toolbar: for quick and easy search of local businesses and points of interest. This complements the infoUSA data by allowing searches for the same businesses you find on Bing maps, enabling searches for, say, "Pizza" or "Pizza in Chicago" or "Best Buy" and adding the results as a layer to your map.
- Publish Custom Reports Templates to Business Analyst Server: enabling anyone in the organization to run reports that are designed specifically for their business.
- Significant Performance Improvements for many critical analysis functions: 10% to 50% improvement in performance is typical.
- Numerous User Interface Improvements to increase ease of use and productivity, including:
- Complete overhaul of the wizards and workflows in Business Analyst to make them more intuitive
- New, easy way to associate company logos with business point layers
- One click access to ArcGIS Online map collections from the Business Analyst toolbar
- Improvements to the Custom Report editor to provide a user interface similar to Excel
- Improvements to Map Reports: ability to change the print resolution of the maps & customize individual map reports for multiple locations
