December 2nd, 2008
Tribune Interactive Media Deploys Forum Analytics Web Maps
Tribune Interactive Media Services has completed the deployment of Forum Analytics residential mapping service on its website. The proprietary Google-based neighborhood resource maps can be found at www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/. This constitutes a major upgrade for the Chicago Tribune website providing them the opportunity to better engage with their consumers. Forum and the Chicago Tribune have been working together since 2005 to provide a continually enhanced user experience through maps and relevant data reporting on the residential real estate pages of their website. This project provided the first stage of Google= customized mapping features allows the end user to interact with a Google framework but view custom data overlays. It is a true marriage of high quality mapping with highly accurate GIS level back-end data sources.
November 9th, 2008
Focus Brands, FASTSIGNS and Forum Analytics Featured in Franchise Times Publication
Forum Analytics was featured recently in an industry leading franchise publication for its proprietary market optimization modeling and real estate lead generator known as VEXRAY.
Read "A Bigger Burrito" and "RE Matchmaker" in their entirety.
October 17th, 2008
Sperry Van Ness Commercial Real Estate Partners with Forum Analytics
Sperry Van Ness Commercial Real Estate (SVN) is a San Francisco based commercial real estate advisory service with offices across the country in every major metro market and is one of the fastest growing commercial real estate firms in the country. SVN has elected to partner with Forum’s VEXRAY.COM real estate match-making engine and will direct feed over 1,200 existing retail listings into VEXRAY to pre-qualify them and match them to prospective retail tenants. Advisors from SVN will also have on-going direct link access to VEXRAY for all future listings through a back of the house integration allowing them one-click access to VEXRAY’s powerful site qualification engine. More information about Sperry Van Ness can be found at www.svn.com.
October 15th, 2008
Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina Selects Forum Analytics for Market Optimization Strategy
Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina, a North Carolina based franchisor of quick and fresh tex-mex style food, selected Forum Analytics to create a sales forecasting model and market optimization plan for its on-going domestic development. With 102 stores in 22 states, Salsarita’s is ready to employ the use of advanced analytics to drive its growth, ensure the highest probability of success for its franchisees, and employ true data-driven decision making for strategic development. More information about Salsarita’s can be found at www.Salsaritas.com.
September 30th, 2008
RETAIL LEAD GENERATION PORTAL VEXRAY.COM FORMS STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH THE SITE TO DO BUSINESS
Chicago (September 30, 2008) - VEXRAY.COM today announced their newly formed strategic alliance with The Site to Do Business, a subsidiary of the CCIM Institute and a leading portal for real estate marketplace information resources. "We’re very pleased to form a mutually beneficial relationship with an organization that drives so much of the retail real estate marketplace. This partnership will ensure more CCIM members gain the competitive edge that VEXRAY.COM’s proprietary lead generation engine provides." said Paul Sill, President and Founder of VEXRAY.COM.
VEXRAY.COM is a retailer sponsored listing service, the only one of its kind in today’s marketplace. Commercial real estate agents have the opportunity to list their property within VEXRAY for free. Doing so triggers an eHarmony® like match-making process that considers the site against over 200 demographic, competitive, business, site, and geographic factors unique to every participating retailer. The end result is a match quality score and a direct link to high potential retail tenants. VEXRAY serves up high qualified leads for brokers at the right time in a retailer’s decision-making process. Current retail participants include Ace Hardware, Sears, FASTSIGNS International, Batteries Plus, Gatti’s Pizza, Schlotzsky’s Deli, Cinnabon, Carvel, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Anytime Fitness.
STDBonline.com is the premier website for real estate information and market analysis in the commercial real estate industry. STDBonline.com contains and uses data provided by leading database providers such as ESRI, TeleAtlas, i-cubed Imagery and Acxiom. The data is aggregated in seconds and presented in various formats. STDBonline.com may be utilized for Nationwide Aerials, Demographics, Business Information, Consumer Expenditures, Retail Market Potential, Financial Data, Flood Maps and much more. STDBonline.com allows you unlimited access to run unlimited reports on unlimited locations nationwide. Whether your focus is retail, office, industrial, multi-family or other commercial disciplines, STDBonline.com will provide you the information necessary to make informed decisions for yourself and your clients.
About VEXRAY.COM
VEXRAY.COM is owned and operated by Forum Analytics, LLC, a Chicago-based research and consulting company that is redefining the real estate landscape. Forum Analytics provides business intelligence solutions to companies of all sizes to assist in real estate planning, market optimization, market share capture, assortment planning, and customer loyalty. Their unique, award winning solutions streamline the entire real estate process and provide a platform from which critical decisions can be made with real-time information. Their solutions are utilized by retailers operating over 18,000 locations generating over $60 billion in annual revenue globally. So whether you’re expanding across the street or across the globe, Forum’s solutions will ensure a successful outcome.
More information about Forum Analytics can be found at www.ForumAnalytics.com or by calling 1-800-689-1652. You may access the VEXRAY real estate portal at www.VEXRAY.com.
About The Site To Do Business (STDB)
STDBonline (Site To Do Business) is an online resource center for commercial real estate professionals which provides information used to analyze and compare the past, present and future trends of properties and geographical areas. STDBonline is owned by the CCIM Institute and the site is operated by STDB, Inc. (STDB), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCIM Institute. STDBonline users vary to include different types of Commercial Real Estate Professionals. Some of those include brokers, retailers, developers, appraisers, mortgage bankers, site analysts, investors, landlords, tenants, restaurant owners, business and economic development planners and more.
For more information about STDBonline, visit www.STDBonline.com or call 469-232-2600. To view samples of reports available on STDBonline.com, visit www.STDB-seesamples.com.
September 30th, 2008Little Caesars is Hot N Ready for Forum’s Market Optimization Modeling
Little Caesars retained the services of Forum Analytics today for the development of a sales forecasting model and for the Forum Analytics proprietary market optimization routine (the Optimizer). Together these tools will provide Little Caesars with a data-driven, analytic framework for future development initiatives and a roadmap for successful growth across the country. In addition to the sales model and optimization routine, Little Caesars will be participating in the VEXRAY.COM real estate filtering portal operated by Forum Analytics. VEXRAY will be used to identify more available site opportunities for franchisees and utilize the new sales model as a pre-qualification engine for filtering thousands of real estate opportunities to find the best ones available right now, focusing franchisees on the best sites for expansion and increasing their speed to market with new site openings.
September 20th, 2008
GameStop Engages in Store Clustering Analysis with Forum Analytics
GameStop, the world's largest video game retailer with over 4,400 stores located throughout the United States and 15 countries, has retained the services of Forum Analytics to perform advanced statistical modeling for the purpose of identifying the market factors that drive their best-performing units. This project will enhance their efforts for identifying market gap opportunities across the country as they seek to further expand into high potential new locations. The modeling process developed by Forum will ensure the highest degree of success for new locations and also assist with issues from inventory assortment to advertising effectiveness. More information about GameStop can be found at www.gamestop.com.
August 29th, 2008
Anytime Fitness Retains Forum Analytics for VEXRAY Portal
Anytime Fitness, one of the fastest growing franchise concepts in the country, has retained the services of Forum Analytics to develop a customized in-house mapping system and web portal to streamline their real estate site selection process. Anytime Fitness operates 792 fitness centers across the United States, Canada and Australia, and has plans to open several hundred more in 2009. Through the use of Forum’s proprietary VEXRAY web portal, Anytime plans to organize the thousands of real estate opportunities they must consider every month into a prioritized, qualified database of high potential sites for prospective new operators. By using VEXRAY's advanced filtering approach, Anytime will get to market faster and develop units in smarter configurations, which will maximize their market share and minimize the risk of sales overlap between units.
August 1st, 2008
DeVry University to Develop Web-Based Marketing System with Forum Analytics
DeVry University (Ticker: DV), one of the leading for profit educational firms in the United States, has retained Forum Analytics to develop a web-based mapping and demographic reporting system for their field representatives working on local marketing initiatives across the country. Forum will be developing a proprietary Google-based GIS system to allow their marketing associates to map existing and proposed locations, plot existing students and potential leads, and draw market areas for creating direct mail lists and demographic reports. This new system is aimed at enhancing the information resources and capabilities of the field representatives tasked with driving new student enrollments in each market. DeVry University operates 106 educational locations across the country with 15 planned facilities in 2009.
July 15th, 2008
Google and Forum Analytics Enter Into Licensing Agreement
Forum Analytics has entered into a licensing arrangement with Google, Inc. to develop web-based GIS mapping systems capable of providing the cutting edge graphics most business clients have come to expect from GIS. Forum will develop customized web-deployed GIS systems for business functions such as sales forecasting, territory optimization modeling, competitive impact analysis, target customer modeling and consumer behavior mapping and modeling. Through this partnership, Forum will be poised to lead the charge in the private sector towards the advancement of full-service real estate GIS systems leveraging the quality of the Google Maps and Google Earth technology. Each solution will be customized to integrate client data such as store locations, existing customer households, protected areas, and high development zones.
June 30th, 2008
Forum Analytics Launches the VEXRAY Web Portal
Forum Analytics is once again reshaping the commercial real estate landscape with the launch of its proprietary commercial real estate match making engine at www.VEXRAY.com. The VEXRAY website is currently populated with 12 national retailers all using advanced sales forecasting models developed by Forum to pre-qualify all their existing real estate opportunities in real-time, across the country. VEXRAY provides the perfect combination of the Lending Tree meets eHarmony model to provide retailers with more site opportunities, a better organization structure, and real-time online sales forecasting and market intelligence.
VEXRAY provides numerous benefits to retailers. Through increased visibility, they’ll gain access to hundreds of sites they may never have been exposed to using traditional channels of interaction such as listing services and tenant reps. VEXRAY allows them to focus their organization on the highest potential sites based on known success attributes and drivers of their business which will increase their speed to market and change the entire real estate process from reactive to proactive. The VEXRAY portal also provides a central repository for the status, communication, and execution of every prospective site and is shared across the entire organization. Finally, VEXRAY maximizes the value of any forecasting model investment and delivers a higher ROI by ensuring that all sites are measured against the evaluation criteria required for success.
With over 18,000 units and $60 billion worth of client sites assessed, Forum is an industry leader in market analytics for retail driven businesses.
May 15th, 2008
FOCUS Brands Partners with Forum Analytics to Create Statistical Modeling and Geographic Information System (GIS)
FOCUS Brands, the franchisor and operator of over 1,750 ice cream stores, bakeries, sandwich shops, and cafes under the brand names Carvel®, Cinnabon®, Schlotzsky’s®, Moe’s Southwest Grill®, and the franchisor of Seattle’s Best Coffee® on military bases and in certain international markets, announced today that it completed the implementation of a comprehensive site selection, market optimization, and sales forecasting system for their recently acquired Moe’s concept. The new system was developed by Chicago-based Forum Analytics, LLC, and streamlines the mission critical task of determining the optimal number of new Moe’s locations for expansion in markets across the country. It also performs sales potential forecasting, cannibalization estimation, and high-potential gap assessment in both new and existing markets.
Mark Whittle, FOCUS Brands vice president of real estate, said “The new solution represents a critical element to the expansion plans under way for the Moe’s brand nationwide. With plans to open 75 new units in the next 18 months, this system helps ensure the highest potential sites are selected first, optimizing the development strategy, and minimizing the probability of making a bad decision.”
Paul Sill, Principal and Founder of Forum Analytics adds, “The implementation of this system is another milestone for our client-focused firm. The science of real estate forecasting is complicated, and highly unique to every client we serve. Our solutions reflect that. Every system we create is customized to meet our client’s specific tactical and strategic goals. This ensures that the modeling and GIS software application we build them has an immediate, tangible impact on their daily and long-term decision making process.”
Whittle continues, “This modeling system gives us an objective measurement tool for assessing performance at our existing units and translates that data into predictive analysis for future restaurants. The Forum Analytics system enabled us to develop and implement a strategic growth plan on a nationwide basis within 4 months after purchasing Moe’s, and provides us an ongoing system for individual site assessment as Moe’s growth increases.