Hello everyone,
I'm trying to learn about GIS and mapping workflows to build thoughtful features for analytics in the CRM system we're building (AJGAR Clothing CRM) at https://ajgar.com/.
The CRM system is primarily for managing:
- customer inquiries
- bulk ordering of clothes
- distributor/client database
- sales shipment records
- repeat business accounts
- delivery/service coverage
As the number of customers and business records grow large, we have become aware that we can no longer rely on our dashboards and spreadsheets to better understand our geography and regional business performance.
I am trying to figure out how other companies visualize customer territory and customer distribution once the data grows too large and becomes unmanageable.
The customer data includes:
- customer locations
- sales force coverage
- order density
- distributor/service zones
- repeat clients
- performance by city and state
- areas of delivery coverage
I have been considering the use of ArcGIS/Esri tools because they are better than simply using mapping tools for logical operational analytics and management of territory.
I have a few questions:
1. How do you deal with many customer points on a map without cluttering?
2. Are heatmaps generally more useful than territory polygons for CRM-style analytics?
3. How do companies manage customer distribution that is ever changing?
4. What's the recommended workflow for syncing CRM/database records into ArcGIS dashboards?
5. Can you point me to a few examples of the successful implementation of GIS for customer management?
I am most interested in hearing from people using real operational datasets and not demo/tutorial examples.
