Like many of you out there have reported, the year seems to be disappearing fast with so many ‘new normal’ that seem to be changing by the hour, let alone over any longer time period.
Measuring the impact of this current pandemic on business is something that will both be very personal, and long debated as we continue to battle the inevitability of trying to open up the economy with keeping everyone safe.
At a local level the ongoing dilemma for local authorities and place managers is how to measure the impact on our town centres, what it means for businesses and visitors alike.
One thing is for sure, our local centres have seen a big increase in footfall as travel restrictions and home working have come in to affect.
Who knew back in 2016 when Geo-Sense was introduced, following many months of development, that today we would be helping place managers with significant data sets to help them make informed decisions through that data?
But, it’s not just our existing client base we are helping, over the last few months we have won contracts with sixteen new towns & cities who have all recognised the benefit of the data we can provide for them.
In addition to these new clients we have developed a number of new reports to help provide a deeper understanding of place.
With the addition of the new clients and additional reports we are able to provide more detailed regional and national comparisons as well as local data sets.
We also recognise that many local authorities need short term solutions that will provide benchmarking, this could be to help with funding grants or budgets that may not be available for long term solutions.
To meet this demand Proximity Futures have introduced our short-term rental option with the option to extend or purchase following the initial rental period.
This makes available the full Intelli-Sense suite of reports and data. In addition, we also provide, free of charge, our Retail-Sense reports that cover the national trends.
Being in a position to help place managers and local authorities over this very difficult period, has proven to be a real asset. We now monitor over 85 towns & cities and as such can provide real insight into town centre usage.