Smappen Territory Mapping Software Review

Territory mapping is one of the most important things you do as a franchisor. It shows your market potential, helps you recruit franchisees, maximises revenue and reduces conflict. It also shows franchisees you have taken the time to give them the same opportunity you had in your own operation, which is the whole point of franchising. Martin, who grew his own network from a single site to more than 50 locations across the UK, looks at Smappen, a cloud-based territory mapping tool for franchisors.

Demographics. For any territory boundary you can see the population, median income, age and gender, employment, housing type, car and van ownership and household make-up. Use the data from your pilot site to find similar areas across the UK.

Customer data. Import your own customers to see where they actually come from, whether you travel to them or they travel to you. Smappen doesn’t decide how big your territories should be. That decision, and the model behind it, stays with you.

Points of interest. Useful for B2B franchises. Search for restaurants in a territory, or narrow it to one type, to judge market potential and give franchisees a ready-made target list.

Reports, metrics and heat maps. One-click reports help with franchisee recruitment, you can import your own metrics, and heat maps show where your audience lives, such as families with children under five.

Martin’s verdict. If your territory planning is currently ad hoc, such as circles drawn on Google Maps, it is worth a look. It won’t do the strategic thinking for you, but it is far better than guessing. It isn’t the only option, and larger networks may need an enterprise system or a consultant to do the heavy lifting, but for small and mid-sized networks it does what it says on the tin. Try the trial with your own data.