find the best office location given 3 choices for a group of employee

[BosKev]

Hi All,

Have a location intelligence question as I'm fairly new to this type of questioning.

we have a group of employee(in different states near the office) looking to move/consolidate space , we want to move them to a new "best fit" office base on drive time/distance within one state in US.

what would be some good steps in alteryx to tackle this? I have calculated the distance /time between home and work for all 3 places. Want to know some of the options in ALteryx that will allow further analysis. 

Thanks,

-Kev

[joshuaburkhow]

Hi @BosKev 

This is a great use case for the spatial tools. Question for you: are you looking to calculate the shortest overall distance across all employees, the shortest collective commute or what is your definition of "best fit"?

[BosKev]

I think the shortest commute collectively....they might want to fit the group into one location not multiple.

[BosKev]

just want to add, I have the distance between the 3 offices to home and found the min(distance) for each employee to 1 of the 3 offices. How to I convey the optimal office for the group in a fair way?

[BrandonB · Accepted solution]

You could use a summarize tool, group by office location, and average commute distance. Then you would see which location has the lowest average distance across all people. 

[danilang]

Hi @BosKev 

The most recent challenge Let's all go to the movies solves exactly this question.  If you need to add in factors other than drive time, i.e. housing cost, quality of schools, etc., you'll probably want to set up a problem using the Optimization tool to maximize the "return" given the various costs

Dan

[BosKev]

Thanks both @BrandonB , @danilang  interested in optimization tool for more variable input will look into it.