Locations apply a measure hierarchy to geographical or operational structures in your organization. You use locations to see the overall performance of a single location or division, and to compare one location to another. For example, locations do not necessarily represent geographical locations. They can represent operational units, divisions, projects, or any other element that is meaningful to your organization. In our current global corporate environment, it is often important to reflect data about a specific group that operates across multiple countries. For example, your engineering division can include groups in San Francisco, Kansas City, Toronto, Fribourg, and Shanghai. Measure structures can contain multiple location hierarchies.

Figure 1‑3 shows Total Company composed of the North America, UK, EMEA, and AsiaPac locations. Lower in the structure, the United States contains the Western US, Central US, and Eastern US locations.