Business

Define how your organization will support its mission with a geospatial strategy

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Aligning GIS with business objectives

GIS is a powerful tool that can enhance and streamline processes, improve decision-making, and ultimately drive the success of your business. A successful GIS program places priority and focus on the business and its mission.

a gis map and dashboard that enhances business decisions

Key considerations

  • Executive sponsorship and strategy

    Geospatial excellence can be achieved through two key factors: having a geospatial strategy to guide efforts and gaining buy-in from leadership to ensure its implementation.

  • Business value and alignment

    Align geospatial resources with your organization's mission, goals, and priorities. Match geospatial capabilities to workflows, brainstorm on solutions to challenges, and communicate the vision.

  • Investment and ROI

    Ensure investment in GIS initiatives by considering corporate oversight and metrics, communicating value to drive funding and prioritization of resources and initiatives, measuring outcomes, and communicating results.

  • Solution portfolio

    Design and develop a comprehensive set of solutions that not only meets current requirements and workflows, but also enables the development of innovative solutions moving forward.

  • Initiative prioritization

    Define desired future outcomes that are actionable and achievable on a short to long term horizon. Identify, collect, and analyze relevant data to support outcomes. Establish KPIs to monitor outcomes, evaluate effectiveness, and adjust as required.

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A geospatial strategy supports business goals

Start by building a team that includes a GIS champion who evangelizes GIS, an executive sponsor with the authority to make it happen, and technical leaders to support future-state capabilities. Then define and enact your geospatial strategy through four phases of development.

  • Understand

    Define a shared understanding of your organization’s goals, success criteria, and current challenges. This allows you to justify and develop a plan to overcome these challenges.

  • Plan

    Create a road map that clearly defines short-term and long-term goals with specific and measurable objectives aligned with the organizational mission.

  • Act

    Launch a series of implementation cycles based on your road map. This involves actively engaging with stakeholders and conducting research and analysis, and allows for flexibility and adaptability.

  • Revisit

    Review and update your strategy, if necessary, to account for changes in leadership priorities, business goals, and technology.

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