The management of space is a key element in the success of any retailer.
Achieving the highest profit from any given area has become a science with a range of advanced analytical tools supporting the retailer in deciding anything from the location of a store to the location of the product on a shelf. However, retailers with multiple locations seldom have accurate information of the floor space they have in each location, or indeed the actual equipment that occupies it.

ActivePlan's advanced database technology allows the data to be analyzed from a variety of perspectives and presented in ways that managers of the mainstream business can understand and relate to their measurement criteria. Each user has a unique login, allowing ActivePlan to present them with information in a form that best fits their interests e.g. a colored-up floor plan, a 3D model or more traditional reports. This approach ensures that confidential or sensitive information is delivered to a more restricted audience and for management to be provided with high-level views for decision-making, but delivered from more detailed, accurate and up to date data.

By ensuring everything is held within the database, ActivePlan allows an owner to enjoy the functionality of a CAD-based FM application, but through an Internet browser, allowing the information to be accessed enterprise-wide. It provides an "Integration Channel" that allows information from one application to interact dynamically with information in another. Where a number of departments, using a range of software tools, undertake planning and analysis projects, some at a macro level, some at the more detailed micro level, management can use ActivePlan to provide a "helicopter view" for decision making.
Recent tightening of legislation regarding asbestos, discrimination of the disabled and general health and safety is also generating surveying projects. ActivePlan provides the means to glue together existing and new datasets (even scanned drawings and sketches) to provide a survey team with more coordinated information against which to record their findings.

Survey costs are reduced due to a combination of hand-held devices and "pull-down" data entry programs that guarantee the integrity of the data captured. The surveyor can be required to record a budget cost for any remedial work and produce a scope of work that can automatically generate a schedule of works and instruction for a framework contractor, updating project control systems, whilst reducing administration costs considerably.

By considering information gathering at a business level, costs are saved when a survey for one purpose could update the master floor plan with a recent architectural change that might have an impact on the positioning of a promotional display.
The result is a single Activeplan repository for the entire estate and assets of a Retailer, from the existing or proposed stores, their local details including the materials and equipment from which they were created and any health & safety risks, through to the functional areas, departments, fixtures and merchandise they contain.

Accurate and reliable record information helps logistics teams to ship the right products to the right locations and ensure the requisite equipment is there to display these products properly, along with processes that help keep that information up to date. This accurate store-specific information allows a range of analyses including simulations of the customer's experience as they move through the building.

Key features include:

• The means to convert unintelligent CAD plans into a SQL database, facilitating the integration of information from merchandising applications, fixture databases and CAD floor plans that dynamically generate new proposed layouts in 2D, 3D and VR models.
• Faster understanding/approval - The interactive models are generated from the database so any changes in one aspect of a layout can be immediately seen as an interactive 3D model (or 4D driven by planning software), allowing a non-technical client to fully appreciate what is being proposed and, if necessary, raise an objection, thereby reducing abortive costs.
• Libraries of functional spaces and model departments and stores can be created and easily maintained, which include required equipment and building materials, thereby providing the means to generate more accurate cost models. These can be laid out on a floor plans and produce costs models and schedules of materials.
• Co-ordination - As the design evolves, Activeplan can co-ordinate the designs from the various disciplines and generate room/area data sheets with schedules of equipment in a form that can populate procurement or maintenance management systems
• Specification management -Activeplan allows the specification to be progressively updated, allowing the delivery team to differentiate between things the MUST be "fixed" months before completion, whilst allowing other items (such as profiles) to be "progressively fixed".
• Exception reports that highlight individual stores where a proposed layout might not fit, facilitating store-specific plans
• Each proposed version is automatically recorded, the final selection generating the required schedule of equipment and recording which was used and when. This allows historic performance to be compared, creating a re-useable knowledge base of what did (or didn't) work.
• Ability to model a number of "what ifs" and then to help deploy the best option
• View the store, drilling down to the individual product on the shelf in every department or business area.
• Brower-based architecture that allows very cost-effective deployment and ongoing maintenance via its secure hosted extranet service (but it can be deployed on an internal network if required).