More than one data year available for Business Analyst Online

[MorganRobinson]

My clients love the reports available through Business Analyst Online (BAO), however it would be nice to select years to pull data for.  It is important to show snapshots of what is currently going on in their community, however if we could show several previous years too we could see where the trend for the area is going.  Is the area on trend for a leakage or surplus?  Are businesses moving out/in?  Median household income rising or falling?  Trends are very important in business decisions, and if BAO had the option of showing previous years data we could assist our clients with more educated decision making.  Esri already has the data, just don’t remove it from the site when new data is available.

[ArleneBaker]

Great idea.  Especially when new data/partial data is released in BAO, but not available to users of Business Analyst for ARCGIS Desktop for several months.  We use both in my company and staggered data release makes it had to maintain data consistancy.  Being able to access different datasets in BAO would help with this issue.

[ScottPrindle]

Hello Morgan,

Thank you for submitting this idea. Would your clients find comparisons of specific reports over time more useful, or comparisons of specific variables within the report?

When voting on this idea, please consider sharing your use case and how you envision this suggestion improving your workflows.

Thanks,

Scott

[MorganRobinson]

The two reports I use most often are the Demographic and Income Profile and the Retail MarketPlace Profile.  It would be very beneficial to choose what year to pull data from.  Being able to choose individual years for at least 3 - 5 years previous to compare would be great for all BAO reports.  It is hard to assess the potential of selected sites based only on one year’s data for an area, for me, the two reports mentioned above would benefit me most.

With several years’ worth of data, we can have a better idea of the direction an area is going.  For example, my clients do not want to open a high end restaurant in an area that is experiencing a decline in median household income.  However, with only one year data option, I don’t know how the area is trending.  I have to look at other sources to try to determine if the area is trending a rise, decline, or steady median household income.

One small town Downton Development Authority client wanted to know how their town was doing since their revitalization project and new businesses opening up.  It would have been nice to have several years’ worth of data to compare to on the Retail MarketPlace Profile report.  That way we could gage the revitalization project’s impact on the town better.  It is still a very powerful report, but being able to compare today’s data with previous years could help make educated decisions on planning and future goals.

[ScottPrindle]

When voting on this idea, please consider sharing any trends or other information you would like to be able to pull from historic data. Thanks!

[CorrinaSpurlin]

Has this feature been added yet? I want to run a community profile report from a previous year, but building it myself would be a bit of a pain.