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Location Planning Managers at Sainsbury’s in Coventry

In Jobs4,401 Views

Sainsbury's logoAs Location Planning Manager for Sainsbury’s, you will evaluate new site locations, providing sales forecasts and competitor analysis to support our expansion and investment plans. Using the full range of tools and techniques, you will produce robust, timely analysis to support key stakeholders across the business. Excellent analytical skills are essential, with the commercial awareness to bring a clear customer focus to every capital investment decision.

Degree educated, preferably in Geography, Economics or Town Planning, you will have in-depth knowledge of GIS functionality and systems capability, with the ability to challenge, stretch and develop existing methodologies. This is a complex, fast-paced and wide-ranging business, so you’ll also need the vision to integrate data qualitative and quantitative data from different sources, for example: bespoke customer analysis, sensitivities, customer research, financial appraisals and retail feedback.

Sainsbury’s is an established retailer with ambitious plans for the future. While we already have more than 1,000 stores, we are still expanding and growing our product ranges in areas such as General Merchandise, Electrical, Entertainment, Energy and Clothing, as well as food. By 2020, 20% of our sales will come from beyond our ‘core supermarket’ business, creating remarkable scope for you to both accelerate and diversify your career development.

Sainsbury’s is the place to be.
To find out more and apply, visit sainsburys.jobs

Click here to apply for this job online and find out more about Location Planning Manager roles at Sainsbury’s.

Senior Location Planner – Convenience at Sainsbury’s, Coventry

In Jobs2,461 Views

Sainsbury's logoLocation: Coventry
Salary: £attractive

As a Senior Location Planner for Sainsbury’s Convenience Division, you will manage all location planning requirements within a defined geographical area. It’s an exciting and diverse role with huge potential for the right individual(s).

This is your opportunity to take ownership of the relationship between Retail and Property, providing accurate forecasts for new store openings and extensions. You will analyse potential performance, assess the impact of competitor openings and make clear, strategic and commercial recommendations. You will be an expert on the retail landscape, constantly identifying opportunities to challenge accepted practices, improve and simplify methodologies and ensure that customer needs are at the heart of all capital investment decisions.

Working with colleagues in the Supermarket team, you will develop an integrated and targeted network plan to meet the needs of a fast-growing business focussing resource on the right sites.

You will have strong analytical skills and significant experience of GIS within a complex retail environment, supported by a relevant degree. Good communication skills are essential as is your ability to work as part of a team, bringing out the best in every individual. You must possess the ability to plan and prioritise your own work, and that of your zone ensuring key deadlines are met.

Sainsbury’s is an established retailer with ambitious plans for the future and values that set us apart from our peers. While we already have more than 1,000 stores (including 500 Convenience Stores), we are still expanding and growing our product ranges in areas such as General Merchandise, Electrical, Entertainment, Energy and Clothing, as well as food. By 2020, 20% of our sales will come from beyond our ‘core supermarket’ business, with Convenience playing a large part in this growth. There is therefore remarkable scope for you to grow with us, progressing your career in a business offering plenty of opportunities to both accelerate and diversify your development.

Sainsbury’s is the place to be.
To find out more and apply, visit sainsburys.jobs

For more details about this job and to apply online visit
Sainsbury’s job and career information

The changing high street – CBRE, London, 6th Nov 2012

In Archived Events2,173 Views

Society for Property ResearchersDate: Tuesday 6th November
Venue: CBRE, Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, London W1G 0NB
Nearest tube: Bond Street
Time: 6.30pm – 8pm (Registration at 6pm)

We’re excited to announce the first collaborative meeting between the Society for Location Analysis (SLA) and the Society for Property Researchers (SPR) which examines the changing high street and its prospects going forward.

Many High Streets look to be on their last legs. Vacancy rates have proliferated. Stock obsolescence problems seem to become more pronounced by the day. Administrations show no signs of easing. Mainstream investors continue their retreat from High Street shopping. Multiple retrenchment into larger towns has turned from a trickle into a flood. And expiry clusters appear to threaten secondary shopping everywhere. So where is all this going?

Are things really as bad as they look or is something entirely different actually happening on the UK’s embattled High Streets? Are we actually seeing the beginning of a renaissance as obsolete shopping is finally forced into other uses? With little in the way of speculative development activity, is the investment focus poised to switch back to prime High Street? Leading retail market commentator Jonathan Reynolds of OXIRM is joined by Richard Gwilliam of Prupim, Gregor Durston of SpaceNK and Roger Wade of BOXPARK to discuss the high street problem.

Chair – Neil Blake, Head of UK & EMEA Research, CBRE

Key-note Speaker:

Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management, OXIRM

Speakers:

Richard Gwilliam, Head of Property Research, PRUPIM
Gregor Durston, SpaceNK
Roger Wade, CEO & Founder BOXPARK

Download speaker’s presentations

Download Jonathan Reynold’s presentation Prospects for the High Street

Download Richard Gwilliam’s presentation “High Street Retail – Where Next?”

Download Gregor Durston’s presentation “The High Street: The heart of every community?”

Download Roger Wade’s presentation “The Future of Retail: Multichannel Store”

Agenda

  • 18.30 – Chair’s opening remarks – Neil Blake, CBRE
  • 18.40 – Jonathan Reynolds, OXIRM
  • 19.00 – Richard Gwilliam, Prupim
  • 19.20 – Gregor Durston, SpaceNK
  • 19.40 – Roger Wade, Boxpark
  • 20.00 – Chair: close, networking – Neil Blake

Speaker synopsis

Gregor Durston, SpaceNK
Gregor will begin with a focus on the biggest challenge to the high street. He will then provide a definition of the high street and present some additional thoughts on customer depletion. He will touch on forthcoming lease expiry’s and the impact this will have as well as retailer withdrawal reasons e.g. saturation, market turmoil, internet shopping etc. Gregor will share insights into Space NK’s high street and also his views on multi-channel retailing, site selection and working the high street.

Speaker biographies

Dr Neil Blake, CBREDr Neil Blake, Head of UK and EMEA Research, CBRE

Dr Neil Blake is Head of UK and EMEA Research for CBRE. Prior to joining CBRE in mid-2012 Neil has held positions of Director of Economic Analysis at Oxford Economics and Director of Economics and Forecasting at Experian Business Strategies. He has also worked for Wharton Econometrics (Global Insight) and the University of East Anglia. He holds degrees from the Universities of York and Warwick.

Neil has extensive knowledge of economic modelling and forecasting and has worked on numerous retail and property-related projects. These include modelling international property returns for a leading agent, work for the Barker Review on the economic effects of restrictions on housing supply, the RICS City Office Model, “How Much Space?” and “Retail Voids” for the BCSC, “The Future of Retail” for the BRC and the IPF Research Foundation’s project on “Property and Inflation”, contributing to the development of an investment strategy for a major Dutch property investor as well as modelling, forecasting and scenario analysis of the demand for commercial and residential space in Abu Dhabi.

Neil is a member of the SPR and is a frequent speaker at SPR, IPF and IPD events.

Dr Jonathan Reynolds, OXIRMDr Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Associate Dean at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School

Jonathan Reynolds is Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Associate Dean at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School.

A geographer and planner by background, he now works with students of marketing and retailing of all ages and leads applied research projects on the sector internationally.

He is the current director of the longstanding Oxford Retail Location Analysis workshop (which next runs between 8-10 April, 2013).

Richard Gwilliam, PRUPIMRichard Gwilliam, Head of Property Research, PRUPIM

Richard is Head of Property Research at PRUPIM.

He is responsible for the overall direction of property research within PRUPIM, including the analysis of the UK and global property markets, the formation of in-house views, and determination of strategy for PRUPIM’s funds, as well as bespoke in-depth research projects.

Richard has a decade of analysis and research experience within property investment; before joining PRUPIM in 2006, he spent three years at IPD.

Roger Wade, CEO & Founder BOXPARK

Roger Wade is the Founder and ex owner of the Original British Street Fashion brand, Boxfresh. After spending a few years in Advertising after graduating from University, Roger started Boxfresh in 1989. He grew the brand from a market stall, to an International Brand selling in over 12 different countries. Boxfresh were reknowned pioneers of the British Street scene, and were the first to import labels like Carhartt, G-Star and Penfield into the UK. in 2005, Roger sold the Boxfresh to Pentland Brands and formed his own Brand Consultancy, Brands Incorporated, specialising in the development, financing and licensing of UK Fashion Brands. In 2010, Roger founded and created the World’s first Pop Up Mall, Boxpark Shoreditch. BOXPARK is constructed of stripped, and refitted shipping containers, to create unique, low cost, low risk, ‘box shops’. Filled with a unique mix of international fashion and lifestyle brands, galleries and cafés, it’s the world’s first ‘pop-up’ mall – so named because its basic building blocks are inherently movable: they can, and will, pop up anywhere in the world!
Roger is a regular columnist for Drapers, a guest speaker at Manchester and London fashion network, an Associate Lecturer at London College of Fashion, and is a member of the Cool Brands Council.

Registration: To book your place on this event, please email info@thesla.org

Interesting Innovations in Location Analysis, SLA Forum, London, 23rd Oct

In Archived Events2,175 Views

Date: Tuesday 23rd October
Time: 9.30am registration, 10am start, 4.30pm finish
Venue: CBRE, Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, London W1G 0NB
Nearest tube: Bond Street

This year’s theme, ‘Interesting innovations in location analysis’ has sparked much interest amongst the suppliers in the industry. Below is the line-up for the day. To reserve your place please email info@thesla.org

Agenda

9.30 Registration / coffee
10.00 Peter Sleight – intro.
10.10 Paul Thompson, Pitney Bowes Software – Waypoint
10.40 Mark Thurstain-Goodwin, Geofutures – The Knowledge Garden

11.10 Coffee break

11.40 Ian Abbott, MapMechanics – GeoXploit
12.10 Blair Freebairn, GeoLytics – Innovations in Analytical Data
12.40 Crawford Davidson, MD and Nigel Dodd, Retail Consultant, Telefónica Dynamic Insights – Smartsteps

13.10 Lunch

14.10 Mark Stileman and Sarah Gibbons, Ordnance Survey
14.40 Q&A

15.00 Tea break

15.30 Expert Panel
15.45 Jon Walker Award presentation.
16.00 Networking
16.30 Peter Sleight – close.

Download speaker’s presentations

Download Ian Abbott’s presentation “Advanced drive time analysis with GeoXploit” or read it online: http://prezi.com/mopztiu7eo3h/geoxploit-for-sla-forum/

Download Ordnance Survey’s presentation “Enriching our geospatial data for analytic applications”

Download Blair Freebairn from GeoLytix presentation “Innovations in Analytical Data”

We hope to have the rest available shortly…

Speakers’ synopsis

Geofutures – The Knowledge Garden: where insight grows

Mark Thurstain Goodwin, GeoFutures

Geofutures is an independent technology company specialising in spatial insight and mapping. Spun out from UCL, its achievements include designing and creating the CLG Town Centres statistical series, The Local Data Company’s Town Centre Intelligence application, a series of analyses for the British Council of Shopping Centres, and property valuation models for clients including Transport for London, Grosvenor Estates and the Rent Service.

Over ten years we’ve seen constant change in the data, software, mapping and online delivery we can offer our clients. The temptation is to be led by the technology – throwing every innovation into complex analysis tools and expecting everyone to be grateful.

What we’ve learned is that experts making multi-million pound development decisions tend not to want oceans of data to analyse. They want straightforward, easy accessed outputs of sound analysis, to allow them to apply their knowledge and expertise to its interpretation. They want to share and build insights with colleagues and reach rapid, robust conclusions together.

We learned it, so we built it. The Knowledge Garden is an easy to use online insight application based on a wealth of data but requiring no GIS, statistics or database skills to use. Supplied as a fully supported subscription service, it offers instant access to economic, demographic and social data, pre-processed and ready to map and chart. Interactive map tools allow every user to zoom into areas of interest, understand multiple phenomena at a range of spatial scales and query underlying information at the click of a mouse. Even better, it offers seamless community insight tools within every screen, enabling researchers to save and share unique viewpoints with commentary, pointers, discussion threads, images and documents within defined project spaces.

Yes, it’s supported by the very latest mapping, query engine and fast data tabulation innovations out there, but The Knowledge Garden is designed for real users, not geeks. We keep data constantly and seamlessly updated, but our research professionals need hardly be aware of that. It offers access to unique derived datasets including urban and retail statistics, but the focus is on making these insights commercially usable.

For more information about The Knowledge Garden and to request a demo, please visit www.geofutures.com.

Advanced drive time analysis with GeoXploit

Ian Abbot, MapMechanics

Using drive times for optimising site location analysis has come a long way in the last few years. With the introduction of the new GeoXploit 4 and updated real-world road speed data, drive-time analysis has become faster, more accurate and more reliable than ever before.

Learn how retailers and property professionals can benefit from intelligent site location analysis and optimised drive time catchments by utilising the latest in Geographic Information Systems in conjunction with detailed road speed data.

Title to be confirmed

Blair Freebairn, GeoLytix

Location analysts and their managers rely on precise, accurate, and up to date data. Some of these data are general across the GIS industry (boundary files, road networks, postcodes etc) and some are highly specialist and need to be custom build (demand surfaces, massive drivetime matrices, relevant POI databases). Location Analytic data has historically been bought ‘salad bar’ style from many vendor’s at a high price and with complex licensing, the more niche ‘products’ have often been internally built at a large ‘time cost’ within larger departments.

The rapid growth in the Open Data movement has led to many of the raw materials required to produce the analytical datasets needed by Location Analysts available under fantastically open license terms. Over the last six months GeoLytix have been steadily building a diverse and comprehensive catalogue of both the generalist and specialist datasets used by location analysts, and these data are today being used by several of our early adopter clients. Over 200 layers of powerful data comprising many thousands of attributes have been created, quality assured, documented and are now ready to go to work for the location analyst community. For each layer the best-in-breed source data has been selected, processed, styled, consolidated, documented and cleaned. Then all layers have been reconciled to be internally consistent and had a global set of standards and styles applied. The data is a one-stop-shop and is ready to be installed today. With very few exceptions the data is extremely high resolution, richly attributed and UK wide in coverage.

We will look at the full range of the data repository and reveal how SLA members can either acquire the data at a great price with simple shrink-wrap licenses or exploit it simply by using GeoLytix’s services. Amongst the analytical data assets we will look at are postal boundaries, admin boundaries, named carriage-way level road centrelines, bus stops with volumes, building outlines, category level consumer demand surfaces, traffic counts and speeds, core physical geography (rivers, lakes, foreshore, woodland), rail lines and stations with volumes, cartograms, online and worker spends, geo-demographics, retailing hubs with scores and profiles, house price paid data, schools with pupil counts, road networks for routing, base demographics, population updates, generic POI data, Companies house data and 1:10K Raster backgrounds will all be shown working together

Smart Steps Benefits Summary

Crawford Davidson, Managing Director and Nigel Dodd, Retail Consultant, Telefónica Dynamic Insights


Locality’s economic opportunity
We provide an objective view of a locality’s economic opportunity:

• How many customers visit by time, gender, age and wealth?
• Viewed Hourly, daily, weekly
• Ability to make comparisons between areas

If you sought to open or close a store or were about to under-go a rent review, then the trend in locality footfall is critical insight which you rarely have access to. Especially as you can get this trend for the age, gender and wealth types that define your ideal customers.

Understanding Catchment;

Smart Steps can show you the areas your audience live in to give businesses greater decision making powers around

– the efficiency/likely ROI of advertising campaigns
– the scale and geographic targeting of couponing/door drop activity
– investments to attract new customers such as local taxi or bus deal

Audience Demographic

Footfall is good, but footfall of the right demography allows you to tailor your shop windows and your range to suit the audience. Smart Steps will deliver Audience Footfall breakdown by

• Gender
• Age
• Wealth
• Family type
• Brand behaviour propensity

This will assist with greater precision of ranging, and local marketing communications.

Store Performance measurement, Area comparison and Competitor Store monitoring

Best of all we can compare area vs. area, so performance can be triangulated, store area vs. store area, own area vs. competitor area. Giving insight into the physical space around key locations allows businesses to see not only the Footfall around their own premises, but around their competitors too.

Origination, Destination and Dwell time

A complete view of your customers activities (where they were before this visit, how long they spend here and where they go next) enables much greater decision making capability across a business:

– Origination helps you work out where to place outdoor advertising, leafleting, or street sign walkers to attract footfall to your destination
– Dwell time allows you to work out how attractive your area is, and where there is potential to improve this by, for example, changing your range, or adding wifi in seated areas.
– Destination traffic can highlight where customer needs are not being met highlighting where custom is being lost to a competitor. And by location, which competitor.

Staffing level demands

Many stores risk under trading as lost custom is not easily measurable. Smart Steps measures missed opportunity often perceived by the store manager but hard to evidence:

– How many people drive past at key times when service is perceived to take too long?
– How many more people are driving past in the 30 minutes either side of current opening times?

Quantitative information can inform when and where staffing levels could be optimised to meet customer demand.

Waypoint – Overview

PBS (Pitney Bowes Software), a location intelligence, data management and customer communication management company, has developed a new innovative SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that gives organisations the ability to see and interact with spatial and customer data in real-time through a web browser.

Advances in location technology are changing the way that we consume data and run analysis. Waypoint™ is an easy-to-use, online application for spatial data mapping and catchment reporting that supports customised forecasting models. It is designed for analysts and non-analysts alike who visualise and analyse spatial data dynamically while in the office on a traditional workstation and/or out in the field on smart device/ipad to support location based business decisions.

WayPoint: Sales Forecasting

Waypoint™ is built using PBS’ latest enterprise platform Spectrum Spatial™ which enables location data integration with business/customer data and the ability to run complex “what-if” scenarios on sales forecasting, market planning, thematic mapping and catchment area reviews. This means that anyone, anytime, anywhere, can access and utilise spatial visualisation of data, which was once accessible only by the GIS department. Key features are listed below:

  • EASY TO NAVIGATE Empowers all levels of decision-makers, from entry-level users to executives.
  • FULLY HOSTED SOLUTION No hardware to buy and no software updates to manually install.
  • Software updates will automatically install through the web environment.
  • SECURITY PBS OnDemand co-location facilities are fully secure and open for business 24x7x365.
  • INTEGRATED WITH BING AND GOOGLE Allows for users to choose their mapping platform of choice.
  • DATA UPLOAD User can upload data directly into the online system i.e. customer data
  • SUPPORTS MARKET SCANNING AND HOT-SPOT ANALYSIS Functionality can be further extended to feature advanced
    forecasting modelling.
  • FLEXIBLE The solution can be customised by the PBS services team to fit client exact specific needs i.e. lock-down certain features/data for non-analysts

PBS Analytical Data Suite is integrated into the solution to provide the user with powerful insight on site selection. Example datasets include Destinations (identifies areas of retail activity), PitchPoint (retail pitch), Demographics, Consumer Expenditure, Valuation Office and Business Points along with an array of OpenData from Traffic Counts to Crime data.

Waypoint™ has been rolled out to multi-territories including UK, US, Canada and France for such clients
as Home Depot, Dennys, Qdoba and Vitamin Shoppe.

Speakers’ Biographies

Paul Thompson, Director Analytical Services – EMEA, Pitney Bowes Software
Paul has accumulated over 17 years of experience helping businesses harness the power of predictive analytics to grow their business. Working with some of the largest businesses in the world such as Home Depot, Pep Boys, IKEA, T-Mobile, and TJX, Dennys, Hooters, Rogers Communication, BBC, Japan Tobacco, Paul has developed and implemented state of the art real estate market optimisation systems and customer behavioural models that bridge the gaps between real estate and marketing. Paul has recently relocated from Toronto, Canada to head up the predictive analytics practice across EMEA.

Mark Thurstain-Goodwin is the founder and MD of Geofutures Ltd, an independent data, analysis and mapping software business, originally spun out of UCL in 2002. Having built Geofutures’ reputation delivering large-scale GIS projects such as the CLG Town Centres boundaries, property value models for Transport for London and Grosvenor Estates and the CPI spatial sampling model for ONS, Mark led the design of web-delivered mapping and data applications, enabling any organisation to access spatial data insight without software or training investment. The company’s latest innovation, The Knowledge Garden, takes the next step in meeting research and strategic needs by enabling teams to interact with maps, graphics and data and build insight together.

Mark was among the earliest MSc graduates in GIS from UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, which he undertook following an early career in commercial property analysis. He also holds a Cambridge BA (Hons) in Geography, and remains an honorary fellow at CASA. Contact Mark at mtg@geofutures.com.

Nigel Dodd joined the Telefónica Dynamic Insights team earlier this year after nearly 25 years experience in food retailing with Tesco and Morrisons.

Following a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, he joined the Tesco graduate training programme, performing a number of roles across Property, Marketing and Tesco.com including Director of Insight, Director of Tesco.com Marketing as well as heading up UK Site Research. Nigel joined Morrisons in 2007 as Insight Director, creating Morrisons first Insight department and supporting Marketing as Morrisons successfully made the transition from regional to national brand.

Crawford Davidson, MD in the UK at Telefónica Dynamic Insights , has extensive experience within the industry and has previously driven principal consumer data programmes as Marketing Director at Tesco.com, Tesco Direct and Clubcard in addition to Boots Advantage card.

Gary Powell is the UK Sales Director at Telefónica Dynamic Insights. With years of sales and marketing experience in data analytics companies including Acxiom, Experian, Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet, Gary heads up our sales team looking after our customers.

Ian Abbott, Business Development Manager, MapMechanics
Ian Abbott is a business development manager in the emerging markets team at MapMechanics. He previously worked for MapInfo and Pitney Bowes software for 14 years in a number of roles from support, consulting and presales. He has specialised in the retail and property sectors and has worked closely with many leading organisations ensuring that they have the best software and data for their needs and are able to use them to their full potential. He has a BSc in Geographical Information Systems from Kingston University.

About Blair Freebairn
o Founder and Principal Geolytix – 2011 present
o Global head of analytical data and routing at PB MapInfo – 2011
o Manager of the MapInfo UK predictive analytics (PA) business 2009-2011
o Principal architect and methodologist for EMEA PA 2005-2009
o Modeller working in UK retail 2001-2005
o Head of Site Research at UK largest leisure retailer 1997-2001
o Operational management for leisure retailer 1991-1997
o Over the last ten years have served the site research teams at the majority of the top 25 UK retailers

About GeoLytix
o Founded by Blair Freebairn in 2011 to deliver vendor neutral spatial analytical consulting, development and deployment services
o Sarah Hitchcock joined in Oct 2012 from managing the Network Planning team at J Sainsbury’s bringing additional business consulting, project management and training skills
o Recent projects have included bespoke store forecasting models, training, custom data development, system development and consulting projects
o Can be found via www.geolytix.co.uk or by email to blair.freebairn@geolytix.co.uk

Mark Stileman is a Propositions Manager at Ordnance Survey, responsible for developing new product and service concepts. Mark has played a leading role in developing new products enabled with the third dimension. He has a background in Geography, GIS and Marketing, and has previously worked for Halcrow and the Government of Bermuda.

Sarah Gibbons is the OS MasterMap Topography Layer Product Manager. Her background is predominantly in OS large-scales data Product Management including Product Manager for Land-Line (OS MasterMap Topography Layer’s predecessor) but also having spent some time within the OS Sales team as a Partner Account Manager.

Royal Mail set to shake up the locational data market, 11th Sep, London

In Archived Events1,844 Views

Date: Tuesday 11th September 2012
Venue: CBRE, Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, London W1G 0NB
Nearest tube: Bond Street

Time: Registration from 6pm, Start of seminar at 6.30pm

It’s very rare for a brand new locational dataset to enter the UK market – Royal Mail Pinpoint has started datacapture, with the aim of national coverage by end-July 2013.

RM is capturing the geo-positional details of every residential and business delivery address in the UK, and will be providing these data at prices considerably lower than Ordnance Survey’s AddressPoint (to commercial users – public sector users get a much better deal from OS via the Public Sector Mapping Agreement).

40 delegates attended this evening seminar and enjoyed hearing from Royal Mail, plus informed views from experts in the business, including the location analysis view.

The feedback was very positive with comments such as:

  • A lively session, enjoyable stuff
  • The most fun I’ve had at an SLA event ever. Laughed out loud.
  • Hats off to Gill for her willingness to engage with the debate that emerged, which touched on sensitive stuff well above pay grades.
  • It was a rip-roaring success!
  • Carnage was not avoided but pleasantly enjoyed by all – well done to Jonathan for some skilful chairmanship.
  • BIG thanks to Mark and CBRE for the venue and refreshments.
  • Very entertaining
  • Bob’s passionate presentation was inspirational and the debate between him and Gill was a joy to watch!

Download speaker’s presentations

Download Jonathan’s presentation “The locational data market”

Download Bob’s presentation “Royal Mail Pinpoint – a welcome extension to Britain’s National Spatial Address Infrastructure, or the declaration of Address War 3?”

Download Gill’s presentation “Royal Mail Pinpoint – Changing the market”

Speakers included:

  • Jonathan Reynolds of OXIRM, who will give an SLA view (Jonathan will also chair the event)
  • Gill Moore and Nick Staddon from Royal Mail, who will present Pinpoint
  • Prof. Bob Barr OBE, Manchester Geomatics and Liverpool University, who will put Pinpoint into the context of the Addressing market, and will make some observations
  • Andy Thompson, Head of Network Planning & Property Insight at Sainsbury’s, Andy will comment on the likely usefulness of Pinpoint to Location Analysts.

Agenda

Introduction and The Society for Location Analysis view
Dr Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Associate Dean at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School

Deputising for SLA Chair Peter Sleight, for one night only, Jonathan will provide an introduction to the meeting and briefly review the SLA’s stance towards developments in the spatially referenced address information market. Jonathan will also chair the panel session following our three keynote presentations.

Royal Mail Pinpoint – a welcome extension to Britain’s National Spatial Address Infrastructure, or the declaration of Address War 3?
Prof. Bob Barr OBE, Manchester Geomatics and Liverpool University

Royal Mail’s development of a fine grained postcode system during the 1960s and 1970s has provided Great Britain with one of the most useful postcode systems in the world. Because postcodes cover such a small number of households, on average, they have proved to be valuable for a range of locational analyses, for survey sampling and for in-vehicle navigation. This functionality has been enabled first by the approximate Postzon coordinates designed originally for transport survey purposes and later enhanced, first by the Pinpoint PAC initiative in the 1980’s and later by Ordnance Survey’s AddressPoint in the 1990s.

Unfortunately the whole field of spatially referenced address information in the UK has been marred by high prices, contentious licence conditions and conflict between Local Government, Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail which has been characterised as the ‘Address Wars’. So should we consider Royal Mail’s latest Pinpoint initiative as a welcome enhancement of an already valuable postcode system to make it fit for use in the rapidly burgeoning development of location based services? Or, is it the first shot in the third Address War where Royal Mail tries to take commercial advantage of its de-facto monopoly in the supply of postal address information?

Speaker biographies

Professor Robert Barr OBE, Manchester Geomatics and Liverpool University

Bob Barr is an urban and social geographer who has spent much of his career working on the development of geographical information systems, assessing data quality and commenting on spatial data policy issues. He worked at the University of Manchester for 30 years where he was Director of the Regional Research Laboratory, later spun out as Manchester Geomatics. He served on the Social Exclusion Unit’s Policy Action Team 18 where he chaired the spatial referencing sub-group and which led to the setting up of the ONS Neighbourhood Statistics Service. Manchester Geomatics worked with ONS and Local Authorities to identify flaws in the 2001 Census and to establish a reliable National Address Register for the conduct of the 2011 Census. Since retiring from Manchester, he has remained as Chairman of Manchester Geomatics, has been elected to Warrington Borough Council where he served for four years on the Executive Board. He is currently a member of the National Archives’ Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information, the Cabinet Office Open Data Users Group and the Council of the Association for Geographic Information. He also chairs the AGI Address Geography Special Interest Group. He is a visiting professor at Liverpool University. Bob was awarded an OBE in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to geography.

Gill Moore, Head of Data Capture, Royal Mail

Gill Moore is Head of Data Capture at Royal Mail, she has worked for Royal Mail for over 15 years, in that time she worked in a number of marketing and data related roles. Gill worked in the Address Management Unit for over 4 years where she was responsible for PAF licensing and pricing. For the last 3 yrs Gil has worked in Data Services where she leads the development of Pinpoint for Royal Mail. An addressing expert Gill has done consultancy work in both Europe and Asia, she is also a member of the UPU Address committee.

Nick Staddon, Business Development Manager, Royal Mail

Nick Staddon is a Business Development Manager at the Royal Mail; he has worked for Royal Mail for over 30 years in many different departments and roles. Nick spent 19 of these years working in the National Postcode Centre/Address Management Unit where he carried out management roles in data quality, GIS, postcode area recoding, training and commercial relationships. For the last two years Nick has worked in Data Services where he has been responsible for National Change of Address (NCOA) data sales and more recently the business development of the new Pinpoint dataset for Royal Mail.

Dr Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Associate Dean at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School

Jonathan Reynolds is Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Associate Dean at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School. A geographer and planner by background, he now works with students of marketing and retailing of all ages and leads applied research projects on the sector internationally. He is the current director of the longstanding Oxford Retail Location Analysis workshop (which next runs between 8-10 April, 2013).

Andy Thompson, Head of Network Planning & Property Insight at Sainsbury’s

Andy began his career in GIS and Location Planning at Laser Scan and then Small World Systems some twenty years ago. He then moved to Rank Group as Market Intelligence Manager, where he met future business partners Jon Walker and Steve Halsall. His next venture was to set up his own business, GeoBusiness Solutions, alongside his two former work colleagues, Jon and Steve. GeoBusiness Solutions was an independent location analysis company which grew in success with many customers across retail, property and leisure using their consultancy and modelling skills until its takeover by MapInfo, now Pitney Bowes Business Insight. Andy enjoyed being his own boss and running his own business so he then set another new company, The Wendover Group for three years before moving on to a completely new venture at Anytime Fitness, where as MD Andy helped to establish this successful brand, with clubs across the US, Australia and Europe in the UK. Anytime Fitness now has six clubs open in the UK with plans to double this by the end of 2012. He is currently working at Sainsbury’s heading up their Network Planning and Property Insight team.

We urge you to attend this event, which promises to be both very interesting, and quite lively!

What’s changed and what’s to come in site location? 24th April, London

In Archived Events1,733 Views

Date: Tuesday 24th April 2012
Venue: Jones Lang LaSalle – 22 Hanover Square, London W1S 1JA
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
Time: Registration from 6pm, Start of seminar at 6.30pm

47 site location analysts attended the SLA 10th Anniversary event in London on 24th April at Jones Lang LaSalle’s head offices. There were members attending who were around ten years ago at the founding and others who have just recently joined. Representatives from the top supermarkets and other retailers, consultancies, property companies, and universities all came together to join us in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the SLA, which has seen many changes in sponsors, committee members and focus over the years.

This event took a look back at what has changed and also looked forward to the next ten an even 25 years of the future of location analysis – it may end up being very different to what know today, or, essentially, remain pretty much the same. The theme for the evening was really that we all have to embrace technological changes and move with the times. Three very interesting presenations, all very different takes on the same theme which made for some lively discussion and networking afterwards.

Speakers

Jonathan Reynolds

Talking about anniversaries; Jonathan Reynolds will be celebrating 26 years of the Retail Location Analysis Course at Templeton College/ Said Business School this year, and we’ve asked him to talk about how things have changed over the years and what the future holds.

Watch Jonathan’s presentation online.

Blair Freebairn of Geolytix

Blair has worked in the industry for many years and will be sharing his thoughts and views on the future of the Society for Location Analysis and what it might look like in ten year’s time.

Download Blair’s presentation

Sarah Hitchcock, Head of Network and Investment Planning at Sainsburys

We are delighted to confirm that Sarah Hitchcock, Head of Network and Investment Planning at Sainsbury’s will also be sharing her experiences from a retailer’s perspective on how site location techniques have changed and what’s still as important today as 10 years ago.

Download Sarah’s presentation.

Thanks to all our speakers and everyone who came along and stayed to network and also Jones Lang LaSalle for providing the venue.

Open Data: Powering the Information Age, 21 Feb 2012, Winchester

In Archived Events2,070 Views

Date: Tuesday 21st February 2012
Venue: Mitchell Room, Hampshire County Council, Elizabeth II Court, Winchester, SO23 8UJ
Time: Registration from 6pm, Start of seminar at 6.30pm

Thanks to all those who attended this event, which totalled an impressive 28 on the night, thanks for coming, joining in the question sessions and helping to create such a buzz around the opportunities for open data. We hope to provide links to download Nigel Shadbolt’s presentation shortly.

Download Peter Sleight’s presentation introducing the history of open data.

Download Ian Holt and Chris Parker from Geovation’s presentation on Ordnance Survey’s open data offerings.

Excellent News! We have secured the services of Prof. Nigel Shadbolt, one of the foremost experts on Open Data in the UK, and also one of the two people who have been instrumental in facilitating its introduction, to speak at this event.

Synopsis

Data is the new raw material of the 21st Century – a resource that gets more plentiful every day. Generated and disseminated by users of the Internet and World Wide Web a data deluge is changing our world. Data drives transactions and decisions of every kind. Transport, retail, health, education, leisure along with every aspect of our lives depends on an evolving data ecosystem. The science and engineering of data is fundamental to the modern world.

The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a new strain of data – Open Government Data (OGD). Nation states, regional authorities and cities are all setting up OGD programmes. The reasons are numerous and compelling; transparency and accountability, the drive to improve public services, the creation of social and economic value are all seen as reasons to publish public sector information. The UK is a pioneer in this work having put thousands of datasets online. These range from maps to spending data, crime to education data.

The UK has also pioneered new engineering and technological approaches to open data -this linked data capability is a next stage in the development of the Web.

This talk will examine the rapid emergence of open data and the technologies that support it. It will explore how government and business will benefit from open data. It will discuss the fundamental role of location data in this revolution.

Biography

Professor Nigel Shadbolt, FREng

Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Head of the Web and Internet Science Group at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science. With over 400 publications he has researched on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to computational neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence to the Semantic Web. He was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science and is a Director of the Web Science Trust, and of the Web Foundation – both organisations have a common commitment to advance our understanding of the Web and promote the Web’s positive impact on society. He has recently been awarded £6M funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to lead a research project on The Study and Practice of Social Machines (SOCIAM). The project is for 5 years and includes the Universities of Southampton, Edinburgh and Oxford

In 2009 the Prime Minister appointed him and Sir Tim Berners-Lee as Information Advisors to transform access to Public Sector Information. This work led to the highly acclaimed data.gov.uk site that now provides a portal to over 7800 datasets. In May 2010 he was asked by the UK Coalition Government to join the Public Sector Transparency Board – this oversees Open Data releases across the public sector. In April 2011 he became Chair of the UK Government’s midata programme – which seeks to empower consumers by releasing their data back to them. In November 2011 he was named co-director of the Open Data Institute to be based in Shoreditch, London.

A founder and Chief Technology Officer of ID protection company Garlik Ltd., he was responsible for overseeing development of its Semantic Web based technology platform. In 2008 Garlik was awarded Technology Pioneer status by the Davos World Economic Forum and won the prestigious UK national BT Flagship IT Award. In December 2011 Garlik was acquired by Experian Ltd.

In its 50th Anniversary year 2006–2007, Nigel was President of the British Computer Society. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society. In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary DSc by the University of Nottingham.