GIS Software

Significant Benefits of PCensus Analyst

Easy-to-Use Interface and Customization: The Study Area Wizard guides the user through all of the steps required to define Profile reports, Lifestyle Target reports, Thematic Maps or Pointfiles. Point-and-click on a map to define your own circular, polygon, and drive-time study areas. With PCensus, you can make changes quickly and easily: Make report changes with in-place editing. Double click a report line to alter the text description, format or formula. You don't even need to re-search the demographic data database. Study areas can be easily changed; revise the radii or drive-times and run new demographic profiles. Lifestyles can be easily modified; add a new dimension or change a filter value and a new set of target areas are retrieved.

​

On-line Help: Context sensitive help is available for all screens and dialog boxes via Help buttons or F1 key. The Help system also provides background information program operation and on the Census geography of the United States and Canada.

​

Defining Geographic Study Areas: Retrieve Demographic Profiles or find Target Areas in User-defined study areas described with: Circular areas; e.g 0-.5, 0-1, 0-3 miles, Polygons; e.g. Sales territory, TV region, Drive-time area; e.g. 8 min. to drive. The location of circular or drive-time areas can be defined by: entering long-lat coordinates, street address/intersection, pointing and clicking on a displayed map or selecting a place name. The location of a polygon area can be defined by: entering long-lat coordinates of vertices, tracing on a displayed map or loading a previously saved file of coordinates (e.g. broadcast contours).

 

Standard Study Areas: Retrieve Demographic profiles or find Target Areas in Standard Census and Postal Areas: United States / Puerto Rico, Canada, State, Province, County / Municipio, Census Division (CD), Place, Census Subdivision (CSD), MSA, Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), Census Tract (CT), Block Group, Dissemination Area (DA), Postal 5-Digit Zip Code, Postal Forward Sortation Area (FSA). Standard census areas or postal areas are easily selected from a list to retrieve their demographics. Standard areas can be combined to crate a new area; e.g. several counties or Zip codes can be added together to make a new territory. Study areas can be complex with multiple and overlapping circles and polygons; e.g. the area could be that part of a circle that is also within a polygon. Profiles can be for areas that are either within (the usual situation) or outside of the defined study area.

​

Profile Reports: Profiling tells all about the population in the study area you define. PCensus profile reports include categories of demographic variables grouped together on single pages; e.g. income data. You can customize reports and their layout to include specific demographic variables, calculate percentages, display a dominant variable in a group (e.g. the dominant "income category"), add comments, format columns and line spacing. Profiles for different locations are displayed side-by-side for easy comparison. This lets you answer questions such as "Which area has the most potential consumers?" There is no limit to the number of study areas (e.g. franchise locations) you can compare in a project. In addition, the profile report browser has unprecedented flexibility: Columns can be reordered and sized by dragging. Text can be highlighted using color, bolding or italics. True indentation allows better organization of complex reports, including indentation of long, wrapping lines. “Find” control is useful for finding a specific data item in a large database, ie. to locate lines containing the words “Average Income”. Dominant Group now lists the Top “n” in a group, instead of listing only the dominant entry.

​

Benchmarking and Indexing: Designate a study area column as a Benchmark ie. all of USA and compute indexes for variables in another column/ study area ie. California.

​

Target Reports: Targeting finds all the areas that contain people or households that match a Lifestyle you define.

 

Lifestyles: The user-defined Lifestyle lets you specify the variables that define target areas to be found. The Lifestyle is composed of Dimensions which are based on demographic variables; e.g. "average age" of the population. A Lifestyle can have any number of dimensions. These dimensions can be based on variables from several databases; e.g. demographics and consumer spending. There is no limit to the number of dimensions of a lifestyle. Use Filters to place limits on the value of a dimension; e.g. the average age in an area must be "> 30 years" or it is rejected as a target area. For example, the Lifestyle "Friends of Elvis" describes households where the head-of-household is: Age 45 to 55, Blue collar occupation, Completed high school, Purchases large amounts of peanut butter & bananas. PCensus finds and ranks all the target areas (e.g. places, counties, census tracts, etc) that have households matching this Lifestyle.

 

Target Reports: PCensus target reports list the target areas (those that match the Lifestyle definition; e.g. well-off pet owners) ranked in descending/ascending order based on values of one of the Lifestyle dimensions; e.g. sort target areas in descending order of "average household income." Non-target areas (those that did not match the Lifestyle definition) can also be displayed. The complete demographic profile for any individual target area can also be displayed.

​

Demographic Databases: Choose from a number of databases including demographics, consumer spending, workplace population, market segments, etc. Variables from these databases can be combined together in reports; e.g. household demographics with consumer spending. Database variables can be combined to create new data variables; e.g. children per family, population age 10 to 24 years, etc.. PCensus quickly retrieves demographics for a study area profile or target areas. The map display shows the location of the records as they are found. This visual check confirms that data has been retrieved in the study area you defined.

​

Use Your Data With PCensus Analyst: User's data records (e.g. client data with their address or zip code) can be imported and linked to PCensus databases. This allows comparison of your data with demographics for further analysis; e.g. market penetration studies.

​

Census Block Precision: PCensus Analyst can retrieve demographics with census block precision. Using a block retrieval process substantially enhances the resolution of data retrieval for circles, polygons and drive time areas. A method of data prorating census blocks “on-the-fly” keeps database sizes to a reasonable level. Country Basic Geographic Unit Number of Blocks Improvement in Precision: Name, Number, United States, Block Group 208,648 / 8,262,363 ~40 times, Canada Dissemination Area (DA) 56,590 / 478,707 ~10 times Block Groups or DAs: Blocks in the same area.

​

Median Variable Calculations: Medians are calculated dynamically on the basis of distributions (for example households by income), allowing display of accurate median values even in study areas that aggregate data from multiple database records.

​

Mapping Made Easy, Built-in Mapping: PCensus makes demographic analysis easy with built-in mapping. Use the built-in mapping interface to defined study areas, find location and create thematic maps. PCensus Analyst works with industry leading mapping software from MapInfo / Pitney Bowes Software Inc., ESRI, and Microsoft MapPoint.

 

Thematic Mapping: Demographics can be used to create thematic maps that depict ranges of values (e.g. household incomes) using colored boundary areas (e.g. census tracts, Zip codes), the size and/or color of symbols, pie charts, and dot density maps.On-the-fly Geocoding: PCensus provides the option to geocode imported data in the Batch Site Processing and Create PCensus Database features.

 

Graphing: Demographics of study area profiles or target areas can be displayed as 3D charts and graphs.

​

"On-the-Fly" Report Editor and Advanced Reporting: Batch Site Reporting and Printing: PCensus Analyst lets you analyze many locations at once. Create a set of profile reports based on circles or drive time areas around a set of your locations (e.g. retail outlets, restaurants, hospitals, etc). With batch site processing, you can also display individual site results row-by-row in a PCensus Analyst Target List report, to allow quick comparison of their demographic characteristics. Report template editing is integrated with the PCensus browser so that reports can be modified “on the fly”. Some of the features of the template editor include: Cut, copy and paste a report line or group of report lines from one category to another. 

Edit Line Properties: Change indentation, bolding etc. Modify report line formulae. Support for multiple selection to set indentation etc. for a group of lines. Use drag and drop to reorder lines. Undo changes.

​

Export Data: Total values of demographic variables for study area profiles can be exported as Comma Delimited ASCII (.csv), ASCII Text (.txt) and HTML (.htm) files. Values of demographic variables for every record that is inside the study area being profiled (e.g. block group, zip code, etc.) can be exported as a dBase (.dbf) file. Values of demographic variables for each target area can be exported as dBase (.dbf), ASCII Text (.txt) and HTML (.htm) files. The exported HTML files can be read by Excel and saved as spreadsheet (.xls) files.

​

Save Projects to a Microsoft Word Document or HTML for Internet: A one-button control creates a Microsoft Word document containing all the elements of a project, including Profiles, Target lists, Graphs and Maps. The document can be printed or used as a basis for embedding text and graphics in other Office applications. Study Area Profiles can be saved as HTML files (.html) for display in a web browser. HTML files can also be read by Excel and saved as spreadsheet files (.xls).

​