Territory management in Northern Ireland has just become faster, easier and more precise, streamlining a whole range of activities in marketing, planning and geographic analysis. The advance comes courtesy of a range of new products from MapMechanics, the specialist in geographic information systems.

With these new MapMechanics tools, users can create logical territories for Northern Ireland interactively and with a high degree of automation, achieving results comparable to those provided in Great Britain by Code-Point data with polygons. Some of these techniques are also ideal in other countries where availability of postcode polygon data is limited.

Northern Ireland poses difficulties for anyone wanting to divide the area into territories  for instance, to manage door-to-door distribution or allocate patches to sales or service staff. Standard UK postcodes are used throughout the province, and Ordnance Survey also offers Code-Point data, which provides a geographical point location for every postcode unit (typically comprising up to 15 properties).

However, unlike Great Britain, Northern Ireland has no Code-Point with polygons data. This is the OS dataset that aggregates GB Code-Point data intelligently, giving users a picture of the true geographical spread of each postcode unit.

MapMechanics new tools provide practical alternatives that enable users to achieve comparable results in Northern Ireland  building on the strength of GeoConcept, the leading geographic information system.

One is its Hexagon Builder, which uses a MapMechanics function called Create Grid. In this approach, the system generates a grid of hexagonal areas of any size and overlays this on a digital map of Northern Ireland. The system then automatically allocates postcode units to each hexagon, calculating an accurate address count for each polygon.

Whilst these polygons will not automatically reflect the boundaries of individual postcode units, users can quickly switch postcodes from one calculated polygon to another to fine-tune the end result. The outcome is a logical approximation of the real-world geographical spread of addresses, which is fully viable for many territory management purposes.

MapMechanics Natural Neighbourhoods system takes a different and arguably more intuitive approach. Here GeoConcept automatically creates polygons based on boundaries formed by the road network in the area. Again, a count of the number of addresses can be generated for each resultant polygon.

Not only is Natural Neighbourhoods visually appealing, making it easy for users to see the layout and extent of each territory on the map; it is also highly interactive. GeoConcept builds the initial neighbourhoods automatically, using users own criteria for their extent; but users can then amend each polygon by clicking on the map to increase or reduce its size. The system automatically fills the changed area with a differentiating colour, and recalculates the number of addresses in each.

Users can also draw a freehand outline of their required boundary. The borders of the area then snap to the nearest logical roads or streets. If the area falls in a location where there are no obvious road boundaries, the system simply adopts a shape consistent with the users setup parameters, or reflects the borders drawn on the map.

For users who decide not to opt for the detailed polygons created by Hexagon Builder or Natural Neighbourhoods, MapMechanics also has a simpler but nonetheless effective approach to territory management in Northern Ireland. Because Code-Point positions naturally tend to fall close to roads, it is possible to identify the road system in the surrounding area, and generate logical polygons or walking routes based on these.

We can now offer our customers a full range of practical approaches to territory management in Northern Ireland, says MapMechanics general manager, Theresa Barlow. Moreover, these techniques are also applicable elsewhere in the world. Were offering an approach that reduces dependence on polygon data generated in the country concerned.

 http://www.mapmechanics.com