Summit County is launching SizeUp Summit County on its website, which it said will make market research and business intelligence available to local businesses to help them succeed.
Local businesses can now access industry-specific and local information to help them grow and make decisions using “Big Data” analysis. The research is individually customized for each company. According to the county, SizeUp Summit County allows local businesses to:
- Rank their business performance compared to industry competitors
- Discover potential customers, suppliers and better understand their competitive landscape
- Optimize their marketing to target ideal customer segments
- Learn from over 100 business topics and trainings
The county said the tool helps to level the playing field by providing small businesses market research that typically only large corporations can access.
“In today’s information economy, if you don’t have access to information your business is at a significant disadvantage,” said Madlyn McDonough, economic development and housing manager. “With the launch of SizeUp on the Summit County website, we are empowering our small businesses in the county to make more data-driven decisions and better operate, succeed, and grow.”
Over 99% of all U.S. companies are small businesses, and small businesses create the majority of all net-new private sector jobs, according to the Small Business Administration and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, Summit County said, locally owned businesses create a larger positive economic impact on the local economy because more money spent with them is re-spent locally.
“Summit County is committed to helping our local businesses succeed,” McDonough said. “They are the foundation of our local economy, employ our residents, create new jobs and make our community a more prosperous place. Providing small business insights through SizeUp on our website is another way in which we are partnering with our local businesses for their success,”
SizeUp uses big data, cloud computing and computer algorithms to create custom analysis for local businesses. The data comes from hundreds of public and proprietary data sources covering firmographic, demographic, geographic, labor, wage, cost, consumer spending, transportation and more.
According to Summit County, SizeUp was awarded first place by the United States Department of Commerce for a business app that helps American businesses be more competitive, improve their success, foster prosperity and create more jobs.
This new service provided by the is completely free to local businesses and available anytime through the website at summitcounty.info/sizeup.