Map Data Services Pty Ltd. (MDS) is Tactician's distributor in Australia and New Zealand providing Tactician Online services hosted by Map Data Services in Australia.

GA Research is a specialist market and social research firm with particular expertise in corporate, financial and issues projects. GA Research focuses on projects related to corporate reputation and stakeholder perception, financial transactions and investor relations, issues management and opinion polling, and testing communications materials. GA Research is a division of Gavin Anderson & Company, advisers on corporate, financial and public affairs worldwide. It is a member of the Australian Market and Social Research Organization (AMSRO).

GA Research conducts a range of qualitative and quantitative projects. Often it is needed to identify the location of customers, shareholders or client outlets. This may be part of a desk research stage where catchments need to be defined and understood or as part of focus group recruitment where GA Research needs to find appropriate locations and respondent types.

A recent client of GA Research, an education provider, wished to understand the school choices made by particular family groups in a specific catchment area.

Part of the project required the analysis of Census data to identify the location of these family groups, their demographic make-up and the types of schools they were sending their children to.

Loading this data into Tactician Online provided GA Research with the initial snapshot of education uptake rates across the catchment. Overlaid site data for primary and secondary schools (public, private and religious schools) helped to understand any geographic factors that may be affecting educational uptake. And finally, GA Research was also able to map key demographic variables such as income and ethnicity to add further detail to the catchment profile and determine how important these factors may be in the type of school families chose for their children.

As well as providing the client with a visually descriptive overview of education patterns in the catchment, the analysis also gave them strategic insight into how particular schools can target local families to improve enrolments.

The output was integral in the next qualitative stage of the project by providing clear criteria for focus group recruitment of families in different locations across the catchment.

According to Pete Wilson, GA Research chose Tactician Online because "Complex datasets can benefit greatly from simple maps to identify particular geographic patterns in profile, behavior or attitude. Tactician Online provides us with an easy to use and cost-effective means to create new business and add value to much of our project work. While we have been able to provide population and geographic analysis for clients in the past we have not been able to present this in a succinct, visual way using accurate maps.

We found it easy to quickly gain an overall understanding of how to use Tactician Online. With the more complex analyses we have had to perform we have had terrific support and training from Tony Maber and the Tactician Online team. They have been quick to respond to our questions and requests for geography overlays and new boundary definitions.

We have been promoting the benefits of Tactician Online to consultants across the broader Gavin Anderson international network. We see many opportunities for using Tactician Online in the work GA Research and Gavin Anderson does with shareholders and for electorate analysis on important political issues."

By: Terry Lameiras, International Partner Coordination, Tactician Corporation