Collection Spotlight: SimplyAnalytics
by Stephanie JH McReynolds, Librarian for Business, Management, and Entrepreneurship
With SimplyAnalytics, you can visualize and analyze demographics, consumer behavior, market segments and companies in the United States by creating maps and comparison tables.
Creating a map or table is easy. Start with a location (such as Syracuse, NY, a zip code, a state or the entire United States) and add at least one data variable (such as income, language spoken at home, or brand of shoes bought). Multiple locations and data points may be added. There are many different types of tables available, such as a comparison table, ranking table, related data table and time series table. Maps and tables may be exported.
Companies can be mapped by going to Businesses in SimplyAnalytics and entering a keyword or selecting a NAICS code (recommended for more accurate results). This also generates a table of company information (such as company name, address and industry code) that can be viewed, sorted or exported.
Data sources include the United States Census Bureau, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, NOAA Climate Divisional Database, Claritas PRIZM (consumer segmentation data), MRI-Simmons Local (survey data), Nielsen Scarborough Local Insights (survey data) and Dun and Bradstreet (company data).
The local survey data (such as Nielsen Scarborough Local Insights) includes some questions that are especially relevant to a particular area. For instance, you can map the percentage of people in Syracuse who have visited the New York State Fair or Red House Arts Center, bought something at Byrne Dairy or have recently gone to Crouse Hospital.
For more information about SimplyAnalytics, go to the Support section within the database to view a brief video introduction, download a training guide and read about data sources (under Data Documentation).
Creating a personal profile in SimplyAnalytics is optional but will allow you to save your projects (including tables and maps) in the database. Please note that this database is limited to four simultaneous users. To provide feedback or suggest a title to add to the collection, please complete the Resource Feedback Form.