Chapel Hill Review

County of Orange issued the following announcement on Feb. 5.

Orange County Economic Development and SizeUp have partnered to provide local businesses and entrepreneurs in Orange County the tools they need to expand an existing company or open a new business.

SizeUp’s suite of tools provide small businesses in the county with market research typically available only to large corporations that can afford to hire expensive consultants. SizeUp delivers this similar analysis using big data, algorithms, supercomputing, and the Internet. Small and medium businesses can use SizeUp to make data-driven decisions.

“SizeUp is big data for small businesses,” said Orange County Economic Development Director Steve Brantley. “It provides business intelligence and market research to companies so they can make smarter decisions through data. Their Shop Local feature enables residents and visitors to easily find small businesses within the county that offers the services and products they need. Keeping spending local provides more resources for schools and public safety while creating jobs for Orange County residents.”

SizeUp’s Local Business Intelligence tool utilizes millions of pieces of data to provide businesses in your community with customized data for their unique businesses, in their specific industry, and in their exact location.

• Competitive benchmarks: Compare your business performance to your industry competitors across multiple performance indicators.
• Find customers, suppliers, and competitors: Geographically discover and identify potential customers, suppliers, and competitors to grow your business.
• Best locations to advertise: Identify the best geographic locations to advertise based on industry and demographic characteristics.
• Demographic analysis: Quantify and visualize the demographic, consumer spending, and labor force characteristics.

The Small Business Advisor provides information on 50 topics (and many more subtopics) related to planning, starting, managing, and growing a business. It has an easy-to-understand interface that enables users to explore business topics of their interest. The product provides a roadmap of tasks and processes an entrepreneur can take to be successful. The content is a mix of text information, graphics, and interactive research tools.

• Plan Your Business: Turn dreams into a plan for success by learning about the relevant topics for business planning, as well as analyzing data to validate or reject initial assumptions. 
• Start Your Business: Take correct steps to open a business by learning about the relevant matters and analyzing data related to beginning company operations. 
• Manage Your Business: Run a business like a professional by learning about the subjects related to operating a business and evaluating data to measure industry performance. 
• Grow Your Business: Expand a business for greater success through knowledge about the many ways to extend business success and use of data tools to discover opportunities.

In addition, SizeUp also provides a Shop Local database that promotes local companies. Local business spending creates a higher economic impact for the community and local governments. Through our client’s website, website visitors are empowered to search for and explore local businesses by industry or name so customers can discover and shop at these businesses.

SizeUp provides a text list and geospatial mapping of businesses by industry. Website visitor clicking on a business name will display additional information about the company, depending on the data available, which can include the address, phone number, characteristics, and links to the website and social media for the business.

Original source can be found here.