Software developers, Beacon Dodsworth have been working with the Gazette Media Company, putting together the most effective Geographical Information System (GIS) for use in Regional Press. The Prospex GIS enables them to gain advertising, build circulation and speed deliveries, all from one mapping system.
 
Circulation departments need to plan deliveries to every address and this means being able to map every house. Previously, the data to do this has been unstructured and prohibitively expensive. New reasonably priced datasets are now available. Combining street data with a people classification enables Gazette Media to profile those people who responded to an offer and canvass the streets where the groups who responded most live. NavTech road data and PAF postcode level data are combined providing canvassers with lists of streets to visit. Houses to avoid are filtered out using customer information systems. Areas are then partitioned for teams of canvassers by Prospex avoiding lengthy meetings with A to Zs and highlighters.

The other forces driving this aspect of the development come from legislation. The minimum wage has made it even more important to optimise delivery rounds, while legislative changes have increased the cost of telephone canvassing and so made door to door canvassing a better option.

For advertising, the postcode sector boundary within Prospex, which contains an average of 2,500 households, is a detailed enough geography. Postcode sectors are combined together to build circulation areas and then compared with the catchment areas of advertisers on one map, offering a visual interpretation of their Advertising strategy.

Transport departments can pinpoint the precise location of newsagents as well as the location of one way streets and restricted turns, so that van routes are optimised. Getting to a newsagent half an hour earlier makes a big difference to potential sales.

All this means that one Prospex system is used and shared between three departments, offering a cost-effective solution for all the geographical analysis that is needed within a regional press publishing centre.