ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Business Growth Tracker

Description & Features

Determine which local industries and job engines are emerging, which ones are actively growing, and which ones are slowing down—all in real-time. The following features will be incorporated: show more

Community Return on Investment

Increase revenue by identifying and targeting business/investment opportunities most likely to succeed in your community.

Attract new residents seeking job and economic development opportunities within strengthening sectors.

Decrease unemployment by aligning job training programs with industries experiencing accelerated growth.

Harness the power of small businesses, which are the largest prime mover of your economy and are notoriously the hardest to track.

Capture the growth of new and emerging sectors not yet captured by NAICS codes.

Why we are different

Intuitive to use and easy to understand, the Business Growth Tracker includes tailored, real-time, at-a-glance data that showcases the economic impact of your community’s small businesses, industries, and emerging sectors.

The Business Growth Tracker includes:

Business Revenue

Income from sales (or any use of assets/capital associated with main operations) before costs are deducted

Business Growth
Revenue for local businesses/industries compared to their performance in a previous month, quarter, or year
Market Share
A percentage of a specific market, expressed in revenue and/or units, that compares how well a company is doing against its competitors. This indicator helps evaluate demand in the market when coupled with revenue.
Job Growth
The number of jobs in town or region over time, which affects both business growth and the employment of the resident population.
Industry-Specific Indicators
Specialized indicators that are tailored to different industries, such as sales in retail, units in manufacturing, tickets sold in tourism, and more.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Tourism Planning Toolset

Description & Features

Using mobility and population flow tools, this dashboard helps communities understand visitor counts, yearly tourism patterns, and earning potential by uncovering how visitors travel, where they stay, and where they spend their money.

Community Return on Investment

Increase local business revenue by staying open longer in response to opportunity and closing when the data indicates the season is winding down.

Empower your Chamber of Commerce to closely target the tourism market every year through selective advertising

Attract the right visitors by understanding your city’s visitor counts and yearly patterns.

Focus your city’s entrepreneurs with visitor origination data, inspiring to replicating the amenities your visitors enjoy at home.

Identify the impact of a specific local attraction.
Strengthen your local economy by actively harnessing your tourism industry.

Why we are different

Where expensive consultants rely on one-off surveys and static reports on tourism, our resources perpetually update through the use of mobility data, local receipts, and periodic surveys. CDP leverages ongoing data sources and algorithms that show trends and changes each quarter.

The Tourism Planning Toolset includes:

Visitor Origin data
Number and percent of visitors coming from top origin metro areas and airports
Socioeconomic Characteristics
Characteristics include age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, income, profession, and household structures
Visitor Profile Groups
A detailed grouping by characteristics and behavior, which gives insight into how to visitors engage in different activities or respond to various forms of marketing
Destination Profiles
Identifies and describes what types of people visit popular destinations and if that varies across the year
Shoulder Season Opportunity
This tool helps communities work together to expand the season at the shoulders by continuing to serve tourists when the evidence suggests opportunity.
Hyper-local Geofencing
By geofencing the borders of a given area, such as an airport or roadway, we can track the flow of people through their mobile devices and better understand the number and types of visitors the area attracts.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Workforce Toolset

Description & Features

Using multiple views and filters, this dashboard summarizes workforce mobility, connectivity, demographic, job posting, and job seeker data as well as survey analysis to help employers, employees, and cities alike make better evidence-based decisions.

Community Return on Investment

Attract and retain the best talent based on a better understanding of the skills gap and in-demand skill sets.

Determine competitive salaries for hiring new candidates and retaining high-value team members.

Support the efforts of job training organizations and higher education programs to create programs and curriculums geared towards high-demand skills.

Determine which amenities (parks, recreation, public services, etc.) will attract and retain workers.

Facilitate real estate development by determining the demand for housing by the current and potential workforce.

Deploy effective transportation policies to optimize commutes for the workforce.

Why we are different

Traditional analyses of workforce is centered on outdated demographic data and limited data reported by employers. By combining fresh survey information, continuously updated through a survey panel, individual-level data, and mobility and job listing data, this customized tool gives a comprehensive and real-time view of the state of the current community workforce.

Basic Workforce Toolset features include:

Workforce Demographics
The visualization includes workforce-specific demographic info such as age, gender, income, family size, home location, and more.
Workforce Connectivity
This tool uses mobility data to visualize commuting and traffic patterns, including where they come from, the number of commuters by mode (bus, car, train, etc.), commute time by mode, and cost of transportation.
Supply, Demand, and Cost of Skills
Workforce analysis and summary of the availability of talent, experiences, and in-demand skills using demographic job seeker profile data, job postings, and average salaries of skilled workers in each industry.
Workforce Migration
Analysis of workforce migration as demographics, skill sets, and industries change over time.
Community Clusters
Workforce cluster data based on demographic and psychographic elements to gain a better understanding of dominant groups and their characteristics, behaviors, and interests.
Survey of Workforce
In-depth survey administration and analysis using state-of-the-art methodologies to better understand what the workforce wants from their community and employers. An especially effective tool for employers to determine better incentives for attracting and retaining talent.
Labor Shock Vulnerability
Shock-testing tool that measures the impact of automation and immigration policy with a customized tool that develops individual and composite indices to determine the impact of these effects.
Seasonality
This view includes an assessment of the impact of seasonal employment and in-demand skills of particular industries.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Investment Zone Portal

Description & Features

Maximize opportunities for both communities and investors alike with a comprehensive dashboard tailored to the 8700 certified investment zones. show more

Community Return on Investment

Attract investors to your best opportunities with a detailed demographic of your workforce, detailed analyses of your businesses, and current land use.

Yield a higher rate of return by identifying investments that leverage big data and informed decision-making abilities.

Align your community's opportunities with local and national indicators

Why we are different

There is currently no public application on the market for seeking out the best opportunity zone investments on a local or even a national level. The Investment Zone Portal allows communities to be a model for others in attracting national investors to add to their local economies and benefit from their current opportunities.

Basic Investment Zone Portal features include:

Workforce data
Demographics of the local population, including their trades
Property data
Map of parcels inside investment zones, including current land use, assessed and market value, zoning, and potential use
Current Development
Includes all development in progress in the investment zones. This includes status (application, permitted, approved, in construction) as well as other designations (opportunity zones, district improvement fund, etc.)
Comparative Analysis
Detailed analyses on every business within the opportunity zones
Direct Communication Tool
Direct messaging with businesses within the zones that are interested in investments
Business Health Indicator
Determines the vulnerability and sustainability of current and future business opportunities with a highly tailored CDP tool

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Cost of Living Calculator

Description & Features

This comprehensive cost-of-living calculator uses both local and national data to provide communities the ability to detect and affect contributing factors. When places have a higher CoL and insufficiently high incomes, show more

Community Return on Investment

Attract and retain new residents who understand the financial impact of a move to your community.

Empower employers to use the cost of living to set living wages and retain employees with annual raises that reflect reality.

Equip affordable housing organizations to determine who qualifies for affordable housing based on income thresholds.

Inform tax policies that address the pain points of living in a high-cost area.

Help businesses and investors understand the cost of profiles in terms of liveability.

Why we are different

Our unique, data-driven approach harnesses actual costs as opposed to indexes as well as more components. In addition to national and state-driven data, our local granularity allows any one community to detect fluctuating costs within county boundaries and includes critical components like child care and public transportation. Finally, we avoid methods that lead to biases, especially for small and unique places.

Basic Cost of Living Calculator features include:

Housing

The cost of mortgage or rent and utilities for a certain number of bedrooms

Food

The cost of a nutritionally adequate, low-cost diet for all members of the family

Transportation
The average cost of automobile ownership, automobile usage, and public transit usage
Health Care
The cost of Affordable Healthcare Act Marketplace premiums and out of pocket costs for silver plan owners
Child Care
The cost of full-time center-based care
Other Necessities
The cost of apparel, personal care, furnishings, and other home supplies
Taxes

Federal, state, and city-based income tax based on family size, home type, and income equal to the cost of living

National Comparisons

Compare across any two counties in the US, with relative positioning to all households in the US and to the national average

Local Comparison

A more granular dive into cost comparisons across your community. This includes capturing city/county differences, and even differences across neighborhoods

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Business Transportation Toolset

Description & Features

Efficient transportation leads to increased business, fewer costs, and more revenue. This powerful tool relates transportation effectiveness with real economic indicators to support short-term and long-term city planning and infrastructure decisions.

Community Return on Investment

Support new and growing businesses by providing data for locations that will save them money, time, and resources.

Estimate real losses and gains to prioritize which high-dollar infrastructure projects will save money (and businesses) in the long run.

Leverage good connectivity to attract new businesses and talent to the area with real-time transportation facts and stats.

Why we are different

Detailed enough for a small city to leverage, our Business Transportation Dashboard is updated throughout the year to capture seasonal traffic and its impact on business logistics, the local economy, and other variables.

Basic Business Transportation Toolset features include:

Traffic Index
The traffic index clearly visualizes a city’s traffic patterns so that stakeholders can determine which locations are most affected by congestion and when it is at its worst.
Transportation Health Impacts on Revenue
Traffic has a cost. This tool determines economic loss from poor transportation health, both in short- and long-term losses while offering a comparative analysis across different areas of a city and at different times to help prioritize projects.
Workforce Connectivity Index
This index quantifies workforce connectivity by comparing the length and ease of commuting by aggregating and comparing cities, locations, industries, development projects, pending infrastructure changes, and the emergence of new industrial sectors.
Supply Chain Logistics
In addition to impacting the workforce, traffic also impacts supply chain logistics. Our tailored tool measures the impact of a city’s current connectivity on a business’s ability to transport goods and services in terms of time and costs.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Downtown Retail Data Map

Description & Features

In 2020, Downtown Development was the most important Economic Development topic for cities. CDP will create a real-time data map that includes a high-level overview of the current state of downtown retail as well as detailed views by location, show more

Community Return on Investment

Identify the right businesses that flourish in your downtown district.
Determine the key influencers. What’s holding your downtown retail back? What’s driving its growth?
Inform real estate investors on which businesses create the strongest lease candidates, decreasing turnover.
Discover which anchor businesses would improve the likelihood of success in any downtown district.

Why we are different

Unlike one-off, third-party surveys, our real-time interactive display is perpetually updated with your city’s latest data, aggregating statistics as well as the ability to filter map views by location, business type, demographics, and more.

Basic Downtown Retail Data Map features include:

Deep-Dive Demographics and Migration
Coupled with our Effective Population Study, our demographics and migration analysis goes deeper and further than any census or community survey—and it’s specific to your community. Includes a database of the downtown resident population and a vast amount of demographic and behavioral attributes with which to create custom views on the data map to show multiple dimensions of residents.
Tourism Counts
CDP uses mobility data to determine how many people are visiting from outside of downtown, where they visit, and where they are coming from (regionally or nationally)
Vacant Property Analysis
This tool analyzes the inventory of vacant properties and provides valuations, nearby demographics, and other measures of business opportunity so that cities can implement development initiatives through zoning and investment opportunities
Retail Health using Check-In Data
Measure retail health through social check-in data using a time series measure that allows community leaders to see fluctuations in type of establishment and time of day, week, or year
PoS Analysis of Downtown Retail Businesses
Using data available from each retail business’ Point-of-Sale system (Square, ShopKeep, etc), we can identify and summarize demographic information about their specific consumers, which they can use in their targeted advertising efforts

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Industrial Vulnerability Barometer

Description & Features

The Industrial Vulnerability Barometer promotes evidence-based, long-term decision-making through comprehensive, hyper-local data, and analysis. show more

Community Return on Investment

Protect jobs and revenue by minimizing the effects of economic and industrial downturns.

Mitigate risk in economic development decision-making with local, industry-driven data.

Proactively reduce vulnerability at basic levels (such as workforce education), where it is cheaper to institute safeguards.

Strengthen community sustainability and stability by learning from comparable cities and reducing reliance on external economic contributors.

Why we are different

We approach vulnerability from a comprehensive, hyper-local perspective and in a way that is directly applicable to city decision-making. While other institutions have vulnerability scores, no one has put all the pieces together to create a tool that encompasses reliance on local industry, government policy, and current industry sustainability. Our tool helps cities understand the key components of sustainability and vulnerability—and how both can affect their future.

Basic Industrial Vulnerability Barometer features include:

Industry Reliance Index
The measurement of how much—and in which sectors and sources—of the city’s economy and resident well-being relies on outside industries (both national and foreign). This comparative analysis allows cities to interpret global and national macroeconomic changes in the context of their own city while weighing the cost-benefit of greater self-reliance vs. external opportunities.
Government Policy Reliance
Many cities are disproportionately impacted by certain government (state or national) policies. This feature identifies which policy decisions have the highest impact on a city’s local economy, including industry-based tax regulation, trade, and tariff agreements, and immigration policy (when many local employees are foreign nationals). Cities can then use this information to effectively influence government representatives.
Industry Sustainability
Towns and cities have seen huge losses when an industry dramatically changes course. This feature measures the sustainability of a city’s leading industries (and the jobs it currently supports). It also includes future indicators in that industry such as job and revenue growth, which can help a city plan where to focus its attention.
Overall Vulnerability Score
The Overall Vulnerability Score is a barometer to determine how vulnerable a city is and how it compares against other similar cities. It also includes suggestions on how to decrease vulnerability (investing in certain human capital, bringing in different types of businesses, decreasing reliance on outside factors).

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Innovation Toolset

Description & Features

An innovation district is a geographic area where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators, and accelerators. Should an innovation district be on your community’s (and the world’s) radar? show more

Community Return on Investment

Spark smarter, better decision-making through economic development policies that foster innovation.

Increase job creation in your community by helping new companies start and succeed.

Attract new companies to your community by increasing or focusing on innovation-driven initiatives.

Why we are different

Our Innovation Toolset looks at clusters of innovative companies, moving beyond tracking one company at a time. It brings global innovation measures down to the local level, where the best decision-making lies.

Basic Innovation Toolset features include:

Innovation District Analysis

This tool analyzes both current innovation efforts as well as the potential outcome of future innovation efforts if implementing an innovation district.

Innovation Index

The Innovation index quantifies the level of innovation based on factors such as the number of patents, money spent on R&D, and more, all mapped by industry and neighborhood.

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Downtown Deep Dive

Description & Features

Retail storefronts bring life to local downtowns—but only if they stay alive. This toolset dovetails with our Business Marketing Toolset to help cities facilitate and maintain healthy long-term businesses in their central business districts. show more

Community Return on Investment

Improve the marketing impact of downtown businesses through a better understanding of their customer base.

Better understand consumers visiting downtown establishments and determine the value points (eg. revenue growth) of particular retail businesses to aid investment.

Create and update zoning based on development opportunities that arise from a better understanding of thriving businesses and demand.

Equip small businesses with big data so they can run effective marketing campaigns and tailor shop experiences.

 

Why we are different

Before the Downtown Deep Dive, cities wishing to develop and support downtown businesses had to rely on a commissioned (and recommissioned) impact study conducted by an outside agency. Our Point-of-Sale Analysis and Retail Health Barometer outputs can be viewed at any time, in real-time so that stakeholders can keep the health of their downtown businesses front-of-mind.

Basic Downtown Deep Dive features include:

Customized Point-of-Sale (PoS) Analysis

Using data available from each business’ Point-of-Sale system (Square, ShopKeep, etc), we can identify and summarize demographic information about their specific consumers, which they can use in their targeted advertising efforts.

Retail Health Barometer

Cities looking to develop their retail sectors need to confidently understand consumer consumption of retail products and services. CDP measures retail health using social media check-in data with a time series measure that allows community leaders and city planners to see fluctuations in the type of establishment by the time of day, week, and year.

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Business Marketing Toolset

Description & Features

This sophisticated marketing package groups and compares in-depth demographic and psychographic information of potential customers based on detailed and desirable characteristics, like spending power. As a result, show more

Community Return on Investment

Save money on marketing while enjoying a higher rate of return on the marketing dollar.

Identify specific audiences so businesses can create targeted campaigns tailored for maximum reach and performance.

Reduce the barriers to consumer research by supporting a data-driven customer profile base.

Increase sponsorships for donation-driven organizations by aligning sponsors with the causes they care about.

Why we are different

Our Business Marketing Toolset is powerful because of its community-specific approach—no other company offers accurate, psychographic profiling in the context of where people live, what they earn in the context of the local cost of living, and other cluster-specific factors.

Basic Business Marketing Toolset features include:

CDP Community Clusters

Demographics describe the socio-economic characteristics of a person such as age and marital status. Psychographics group people according to less-tangible characteristics, like preferences, behaviors, and habits. This product leverages both through a Hierarchical Clustering method and a proprietary machine-learning algorithm, creating a highly dimensional consumer profile.

Consumer Spending Profiles

Sponsor-dependent organizations, such as non-profits, will be able to create effective marketing packages that include the spending power of groups of interest. This helps sponsors make contribution decisions with confidence by reducing barriers to understanding whether sponsorship is a good fit.

Testimonials

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Cost of Doing Business Calculator

Description & Features

Attract businesses and investors to your community with a visually compelling—yet remarkably comprehensive—package of demographic, workforce, and cost of living data. While this information is important to business leaders, show more

Community Return on Investment

Attract strong investors and businesses that are a good fit for your city—and have supportive data that align their interests with yours.

Encourage local entrepreneurs to start-up businesses by showcasing available opportunities for growth.

Support new and existing businesses by helping them develop accurate financial models to account for local costs, profits, and potential.

Why we are different

This highly customized dashboard delivers a streamlined marketing tool that aligns key business and investor decisions with expertly curated, compelling, and comprehensive community data.

Basic Cost of Doing Business Calculator features include:

Commercial Real Estate Valuations

Real estate has a high impact on business revenue, costs, and growth. This calculator includes property data, historical business metrics, and our proprietary valuation methods to determine commercial real estate costs, including local commercial property taxes and utilities as relevant.

Cost of Living (CoL)
Low CoL makes a community highly marketable for businesses looking to attract labor. Our CoL tool measures for every county in dollar values using state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques and data sources. CoL also provides a benchmark for the required income necessary for potential employees to live and thrive in your community.
Workforce Supply and Cost
Using a combination of demographic data, social media insights, job board data, and survey analysis, this metric determines where workers live, their reasons for living there (costs, commute, neighborhood characteristics), what industries they work for, their talent and skill levels, and the market rate for those skills and talents.
Business Licenses Taxes
Localized business licenses and taxes account for a large portion of business expenses and can vary from place to place.
Opportunity Zone Filter

The US has 8,700 Qualified Opportunity Zones, which are collectively home to 35 million residents. The Opportunity Zone Filter highlights and details neighborhoods that are eligible opportunity zones, giving investors an increased ability to leverage tax breaks.

Custom Costs

There are costs that do not vary by place but are specific to the business and the stakeholder. This can be easily tailored as part of your marketing visualization tool.

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