What is Insight Services?

Insight Services involves the synthesis of public data and client data to reveal trends and truths in matters of concern to our clients.

Insight Services uses demographic information at the census block
level, with data provided by our clients (membership data, giving data, registration information, etc.) to create a profile of our client and their membership. This information is juxtaposed against the community in which they live, to reveal the current reality less affected by personal or political interests.

This is a question-generating process guided by our skilled consultants and the Insight Services team that begins to ask the questions that deal directly with the current reality. These questions determine the direction of further in-depth analysis. We provide analysis of financial capacity, market-share, drive-time, member density, demographic analysis, ethnic diversity analysis, and economic profiling in order to gain the insight needed to align all parties involved to an action-oriented process leading towards professional fitness, leadership development, and realized potential.

What is GIS?
Geographic Information Systems is the primary technology used in TeamWorks' Insight Services. It is an adaptable system that has found uses in almost every industry. These are a few definitions that we believe represent it most accurately.

"A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing things that exist and events that happen on earth. GIS technology integrates common database operations such as query and statistical analysis with the unique visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by maps.“  
- ESRI Business Solutions

"GIS is an integrated system of computer hardware, software, and trained personnel linking topographic, demographic, utility, facility, image and other resource data that is geographically referenced."  
- NASA

A GIS is a system of hardware, software and procedures to facilitate the management, manipulation, analysis, modeling and display of geo-referenced data to solve complex problems regarding planning and management of resources.
- NCGIA

 

How do you create a GIS?

In the map extent many different features are displayed in conjunction to create a map.
Features can be anything on the Earth that has a location.

There are two types of features, point/line features and shape features.
Point features are created by referencing an X/Y coordinate and placing it on a global coordinate system that places a point in the correct place on the map. Line features are created by stringing a series of points together. Shape files are similar, but a series of lines create a geometric shape that defines the area on a map. These features can be drawn from digitizing an area photo, inputting points into a GPS system or manually.

Examples of point features:
- Members
- Houses
- Buildings
- Traffic Accidents
- Burglaries

Examples of line features:
- School boundaries
- State/County boundaries
- Rivers
- Railroads

Examples of shape features:
- City area
- School district
- Airports
- Drive-Time surrounding a location

In this map line and shape features have been combined to display basic information like roads, city/county boundaries, lakes, rivers, railroads, etc.

Then we'll add the members of a fictitious organization as a series of point features. The process of converting coordinates and street addresses into digital features is called "geocoding."

Next we add demographic information, in this case "Household Income" by census block, as shape files to create a context for understanding the financial composition of the organizations' membership in relation to the surrounding community.

Using this information along with several other demographics and private data provided by the organization, Insight Services can reveal existing tends and patterns.

Where Does the Data Come From?
There are two types of data used by TeamWorks International; public and private.

Public data in raw form can be accessed by anyone through government organizations. Primarily it consists of data taken from the 2000 Census that has been collected, statistically organized, and averaged by census blocks.

Another form of public data can be purchased from companies that project and further organize raw public data. TeamWorks International purchases its data from ESRI Business Solutions. ESRI provides us with street data and projected demographic data. As new streets get built, and new projections are developed ESRI digitizes them and provides updates. ESRI projects 2000 Census data to the current year and forecast 5 years into the future (ex. 2006 and 2011). ESRI's projected data is an industry standard.

Private data comes from our clients. This data is provided in confidentiality and is not shared with the public or other TeamWorks clients. It cannot be bought or sold. Private data is collected by our clients about their members or clients. Schools can use the enrollment data gathered about their students. Churches can provide data about their parishioners. Charities can use the giving information gathered about their benefactors.

The combination of Public and Private data gives our clients unique insight into the fitness and capacity of their organization. 

How do I use Insight Services?

Making critical decisions is a question-generating process. You may come across questions like

• “Is it time to expand our programs or facilities?”
• “Can our membership financially support the change?”
• “Where is the growth or decline in my community?”

The maps and analyses provided by our Insight Services are designed to answer these kinds of questions by providing information about your current condition on which to base a decision.

Maps and analyses are available to answer the following types of questions.

Location “What is at…?’
If you want to find out what objects or events exist at a particular location. “How many other schools are there in a 10 mile radius?” “How many of our members come from across the river?”

Condition “Where is it…?”
If you want to determine which areas in your local area meet certain conditions. “Where do people make an average of $50K and $75K per year?” “What percent of the local population is Catholic?” “What local areas have a growing number of school-age children?

Trends and Patterns “What has changed since…?”
If you want to track changes over time. “How have different ethnicities grown or declined over the past 5 years?” “Is our community getting older or younger?”

Modeling “What if we…?”
If you want to predict how changes might affect your community. “What if we change the school boundaries?” “What if we move our worship space across the highway?”

Spatial “What is the geographic relationship between…?”
If you want to determine how distances affect your organization. “Is there a link between how far people drive and their level of involvement?” “How much of our membership is within 3 miles of our location?” “How many people live close to our parish but choose to attend a parish farther away?”

Surveys are available to answer the “Why” questions. “Why is our membership declining?” “Why are we suddenly understaffed at our school?”

Consulting services are also available to answer the “How” questions.  “How do we proceed?” “How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?” “How do I make these critical decisions while maintaining the integrity of our mission?”



What is Demographic Profiling?
Demographic Profiling uses public demographic data to first create a profile of the communities surrounding our clients.
Private data is then used to create a secondary profile of our client's members.

We create demographic profiles to gain insight into the way things really are, instead of how they seem. Profiles can also be created to show how different key decisions will effect our clients in the future. This is a useful tool in simulating redistricting scenarios, mergers, or fundamental changes regarding systems and facilities.

These profiles can also be used to learn more about our clients' target market. This can be helpful for discerning where to concentrate advertising efforts, determining the location of a new facility, or pinpointing the source of a cultural issue.

Click to view a sample Demographic Profile

What is a Financial Capacity Analysis?
Financial Capacity analysis combines private sales or "giving" data with public demographic data to understand client capacity for growth and sustainability. It aids with the allocation of resources and project planning. Financial Capacity Analysis is a useful tool for capital campaigns, risk assessment on loans, or for clients to gain a better understanding about their members' financial habits and patterns.


Click to view a sample Financial Capacity Analysis

What is a Market Share Analysis?
Market Share Analysis helps determine how our clients compare to their competitors. It combines drive-time, demographic profiling and a unique process that utilizes private data to analyze clients' members in relation to their target demographic.

Market share analysis provides insight to an organization on how well it is reaching people in each neighborhood across its sphere of influence.

The deliverable aspect of this analysis displays members as a percentage of their neighborhood and as a percentage of the total market in which our client is competing. 

Click to view a sample Market Share

What is a Market Potential Analysis?
Market Potential Analysis helps our clients to become aware of communities that have a high concentration of their target demographic.

We analyze clients' membership data to create a profile of shared demographic characteristics that define majority membership. The resulting maps show the client areas where the demographics meet the conditions set by the initial analysis.

With the interpretation of our facilitators, our clients can use this information to focus marketing strategies, determine locations of future facilities, or prepare for changes in market conditions.

Click to view a sample Market Potential

What is Geocoding and Mapping?
Our geocoding services provide clients with the ability to represent their members geospatially and display them on a map. Any object with a specific location can be geocoded; houses, businesses, schools, or county fairs. Events can also be geocoded; burglaries, traffic incidents, wildfires, or tornadoes.

Mapping can sometimes include the digitizing of boundaries. State, county and city boundaries are public data, but we can digitize boundaries for school districts, archdioceses, regional branches of an organization, etc.

Mapping also includes the use of demographics. Typical sets of demographic information include; total population, age, ethnicity, gender, household income, home value, and disposable income. Each set of demographics can be displayed and analyzed by the values of the current year, a 5 year projection, the change in value, and change in percentage between the two projections.

Geocoding and mapping serves our clients by showing members' location and the profile of the community in which they live. It shows them the current and future reality in order to help plan for the future.

Click to view a sample Map

What is a Drive Time Analysis?
A Drive-Time Analysis allows you to see your organization's members in realation to the amount of time it takes them to drive from their homes to your organization's location.

Click to view a sample Drive-Time

What are the benefits of a Survey?
Surveys are popular qualitative research techniques which offer organizations a quick and effective way to gather useful information from a large audience. Our surveys are affordable and highly tailored research tools that provide any size organization with solid, insightful, and quantifiable information to inform decision making processes. Surveys are useful tools to explore demographic characteristics and trends within a particular organization, or to provide a benchmark statistic to compare particular organizational demographics with larger communities. Furthermore, our experienced analysts utilize advanced quantitative data analysis techniques to illuminate the underlying relationships within the data and isolate the most significant variables. Ultimately, surveys are efficient tools for measuring attitude, satisfaction, commitment, desires and a range of other useful metrics that can be tracked over time and used as part of a wider organization strategy and planning process.

Benefits:
•Surveys provide a demographic portrait of an organization which can be compared
  to larger communities as benchmark data, and can be tracked for changes over
  time.
•Survey data is quantifiable, it can be effectively summarized in charts and graphs,
  and survey results are easy to access and understand.
•Data can also be analyzed to illuminate significant underlying relationships and
  isolate influential factors in people’s decision making processes.
•On-line surveys can be conducted across regional, national or international
  boundaries 24 hours a day. 
•Because participants are truly anonymous, they are more willing to discuss
  sensitive topics.  Problems caused by dominant participants are minimized and
  everyone has the chance to respond with an equal voice.
•Survey results generate hypotheses and aid in the construction of questions at the
  start of a research project.
•Survey results illuminate a group’s general consensus at the end of a research project.
•When combined with quantitative data, surveys play an integral role in providing
  the whole systems view of an organization or community.

Click to view a Sample Survey

Click to view a Sample Church Survey

Click to view a Sample Survey Analysis