The SBA has introduced a free tool that aims to help small businesses identify new customers and compare their performance against other businesses in their industry with data collected from hundreds of private and public sources.

The SizeUp tool can be found at www.sba.gov/sizeup. It analyzes a business in comparison to other similar businesses in the same trade and provides geographic information on the marketplace, areas recommended for advertising, and prospective customers, according to the SBA.

The SizeUp tool also provides data analysis in three ways:

• Benchmarking an existing business to see how it sizes up by comparing performance to all other competitors in the same industry;
• A mapping feature to see where customers and suppliers are located;  
• Finding the best places to advertise by choosing from pre-set reports to find areas with the highest industry revenue and the most-underserved markets. Custom demographic reports can also be created.

“Market research and analysis is critical for the success of any small business owner or entrepreneur,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills. “In today's challenging economic environment where small businesses create nearly all net new jobs in the U.S., help for small businesses is more important than ever before.”

GIS Planning Inc., the company that created SizeUp, has licensed the tool to SBA for one year, the agency said, adding its acceptance of the product is not an endorsement of the firm's opinions, products or services.