Creation of "Territory" Layer from existing sets of coordinates

[deleted-user-RJJPsDc3JAiP]

I have a large set of store locations in coordinates that are separated into physical territories (Atlanta south, Atlanta North, etc) that I would like to create a layer to represent. Ideally, the borders of the territories (shape, length, etc) will be defined by the existing stores within that territory. How would I go about creating this territory layer?

I would like to do this because I am receiving additional stores that need to be tagged to each territory, answering the question "Into which of the existing territories do these new stores fall?" (where the are 300 territories in the US so doing this manually would be a huge pain).

I envision after creating the territory layer that I would then run a spatial join to see which of the new coordinates/stores fall into my newly defined territories.

Please let me know if I can provide any additional detail and I greatly appreciate any help!

Also, if there is a better place to post this topic, please dont hesitate to let me know. 

Andrew Charlton

acharlto@marketsource.com 

[JimCousins]

A place to start may be the Data Management >> Features >> Minimum Bounding Geometry tool. This will not leave you with territories that share a contiguous boundary, but may provide a solution for the majority of your new locations. 

A better solution would be to determine if these territories follow any existing political or physical boundaries, and create polygons from them to use in your analysis, if possible (ie: corporate limits, county boundaries, etc.).

Regards,

Jim

[JosephCarter]

Hi, Andy. I agree with Jim, you need to find  boundaries to use in creating your new territories. . .. I would try a spatial join (Join data from another layer based on spatial location) to zip codes (ArcGIS Online, USA ZIP Code Areas, use a 5-digit), use "intersect". Secondly, try a dissolve of these boundaries (you need to be creative to envision how you want your new territories to look and function) to create each new "territory". Give each a unique ID, export to a geodatabase. You may have already thought other existing boundaries that would work for you to join and build from besides Zip Codes. . . .political boundaries, counties, etc.

Good Luck!,

Joe

[deleted-user-RJJPsDc3JAiP]

Thanks guys!

I do believe I would be able to use the minimum bounding geometry tool to create the boundaries to the territories pretty easily, however with 300 separate territories I think that would become quite manual. Although this is exactly what I had envisioned being able to do to the entire set of data at once. I shall keep on dreaming!

And unfortunately the locations that are within each territory really have no geopolitical boundaries that would make good separation because they were initially distributed by volume to however many people owned an area. Very specific to a certain program. 

Although! What I neglected to mention was that each of my territories is owned by an individual, who's address I geocoded, and then I simply ran proximity analysis (within a reasonable radius) to determine to whom that store would belong. I was then able to back track that to the respective territories. 

Thanks again for your help and your timely responses!

Andrew M. Charlton