Private equity and investment firms know all too well that the competition is fierce when it comes to dealmaking. Challenges like inflation, high interest rates, and tight labor markets have made investing complex in recent times. Driving value for portfolio companies to achieve desired returns is more difficult than ever.
Data analytics tools are key to private equity firms’ success.
Data-driven intelligence is critical for private equity and investment firms seeking to mitigate risks and grow their investments. For firms investing in brick-and-mortar companies like restaurants, retail businesses, and other chain businesses, it’s important to select the right type of data analytics tool.
Enter SiteSeer, which is best known as a site selection software for retail chains, real estate brokers, shopping center developers, and economic development professionals. For private equity/investment groups, SiteSeer offers essential functionality for analyzing retail and other multi-site chain investments, growing portfolio investments through expansion, and optimizing the performance of a firm’s entire investment portfolio.
Here are a few ways these firms’ analysts can use in SiteSeer to augment—and simplify—their own analysis:
To analyze the long-term growth capacity/potential of a chain
During the buy-side due diligence process, private equity firms can use SiteSeer’s White Space tool to determine a retail/restaurant/other chain’s capacity for growth in a market or across the U.S. and compare different expansion scenarios. If a business is already operating in a market, White Space determines where the gaps are.
To grow chain businesses through expansion
Once you invest in a chain business—and with existing chain businesses in your investment portfolio—you can use SiteSeer’s many tools to help you execute a growth plan:
- Our Model Builder tool allows you to identify markets for investment based on the key performance indicators that matter most to you—like certain population, median income, proximity to other retail, or distance from competitors. You build a Site Scorecard using the variables that are most important to a location’s success. Then, you analyze sites in SiteSeer against this Site Scorecard, and each will receive a grade based on how well it fits your success criteria.
- Once you run your model, the results will display as a color-coded hotspot theme on a map—a Hot Spot. Hot Spots are a great way to visualize where there might be excellent opportunities or narrow down a list of sites to the very best.
- In SiteSeer, you can even zero in on specific sites that best match your success profile and search for actual commercial real estate listings for sale or lease. That’s thanks to our recent partnership with Resimplifi, which provides CRE listing data for all types of commercial property.
- Machine learning and regression models help private equity firms forecast sales, and analog models evaluate how a site you’re considering compares to the stores in a portfolio company’s current network. That way, you can focus on sites that are most similar to the chain’s top-performing locations and rule out those that do not.
To maximize your return on investment
SiteSeer isn’t just for analyzing new retail/restaurant/other chain investments. White Space is useful for analyzing an existing store base to determine whether to close or relocate certain stores or consolidate other locations. In addition, your portfolio companies can use SiteSeer to improve their businesses and profitability.
How? SiteSeer helps companies understand consumers’ spending trends, develop demographic profiles of their best customers, analyze their different locations’ performance, and much more. SiteSeer is also an excellent tool for performing competitive assessment of the quantity, strength, market share, and positioning of competitors in a market. And that’s just a few tools—there are many others!
Supplement Your Analysts’ Expertise with SiteSeer Data Analytics Tools
SiteSeer’s private equity analytics tools can help your firm supplement your own analysis and increase your confidence in every investment decision you make. With SiteSeer, you can get answers to questions like:
- What markets should this retail chain portfolio company expand into?
- How many locations can a market support long term?
- How can we replicate our success in one market in another market?
- What assets in our portfolio are no longer worth keeping?
Whether you have an internal system already or not, SiteSeer can help your data analysts do their jobs faster and easier. The platform can do the heavy analysis work on every investment you’re analyzing, all within the same system. You can inform your due diligence and portfolio management strategies with data, mitigating your risks and improving the performance of your investments.
Learn more about how to optimize the performance of your private equity portfolio using SiteSeer’s private equity analytics tools, predictive modeling, and more.
