I bought MapPoint 2001 last year with very limited expectations but was pleasantly surprised. But having installed MapPoint 2002 last week, I am blown away.

I run a mid-sized direct marketing consultancy and provide advice mainly to retail/consumer clients. Some of the projects just involve implementation of basic campaigns, but the more profitable work requires us to provide analysis of target market areas, based on demographic profiles and retail store locations.

In the old days, we did this work using paper reports (Census and other market research data). Then, about 5 years ago we started outsourcing this work to a specialist GIS agency. They did great work but we had to pass this cost on the client, which limited our profit margins to the point where the work became marginally profitable.

So, last year I started experimenting with doing the work in house using MapPoint. Unlike the ESRI software our GIS agency used, it was easy enough to use and came with most of the demographic data we needed already loaded. Plus, it allowed us to import our own data from Excel.

The limitations that frustrated me most were the fact that we couldn't set up "territories" representing the sales areas of our clients, and that we couldn't use our clients' logos on the map. And also, in some cases we hit a limit where we weren't able to import all our data (7,500 records or more).

These limitations all seem to have been eliminated in the 2002 version. I also like the improved HTML Export feature and the ability to represent data in the form of pie charts on the map.

I did a project for a client yesterday and the MapPoint work I prepared was amazingly effective. The customer literally said this analysis was worth thousands of dollars to their organization. He was surprised my company was able to turn the work around in less than a week.

Recommended: Yes