Geography Matters : Business

Navigating Choppy Financial Waters with GIS

GeographyMatters — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:03:00 GMT

Now more than ever, financial institutions need to be savvy about doing business. Organizations in this market have been touched by the recent financial crisis and are feeling the effects from credit unions downsizing to stay in positive net worth, to real estate investment trusts (REITs) trying to pay down short term debts.

Organizations are using GIS to navigate in today’s turbulent economic climate, helping them gain insight for making sound decisions. Read how SNL Financial, the premiere multisector-focused information and research firm in the financial services marketplace uses GIS. The technology helps many see information more clearly: investment bankers better understand economic issues in business development; project developers and infrastructure investors make more sound decisions; and fixed income, equity and sell-side analysts are able to meet their bottom line. The versatility of GIS means it can be licensed or used as needed as a subscription service like that at SNL Financial to minimize overhead and training.

Many banks and credit unions like Security Service Federal Credit Union are also turning to GIS. Security Service is using GIS to help them understand their marketplace like never before. GIS is keeping them ahead of the pack when it comes to customer service and business efficiency. This is a smart choice in today’s volatile market environment according to ESRI Financial Industry Marketing Manager Shelli Stockton; “Despite the recent turmoil in the financial marketplace, investment in GIS by financial institutions continues to grow as organizations seek to make the most informed decisions possible as they move forward.” Learn more about GIS for financial institutions.

Farm Credit Services of America, an agricultural lending organization, uses GIS to find more accurate and efficent means of analyzing data and valuing farmland for agricultural loans. Using the system they have seen a 25% increase in Appraisal Team productivity without adding staff and appraisals are completed quicker.

ESRI President Jack Dangermond Talks about the Future of GIS

GeographyMatters — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:18:00 GMT

Recently, Jack Dangermond, ESRI president, talked with Government Technology on what lies ahead for GIS and how the Web plays a crucial role.

"My forecast is that as society becomes familiar with looking at things through geospatial visualization, they will be increasingly interested in services that go beyond simple maps and images. GIS servers managed by public and private GIS organizations will be used to provide these kinds of complementing services.

"The Web and Web services pattern simply represent a new and powerful way to share information and collaborate in its use."

Read the entire article ESRI Founder Jack Dangermond Predicts the Future of GIS

GIS Technology Brings Transoceanic Yacht Races to Spectators

GeographyMatters — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:58:00 GMT

Transoceanic yacht races are not normally thought of as spectator sports. Fans watch as competitors leave the marina, fast becoming a dot on the horizon. Several weeks later, fans at the destination gather to witness the final moments. Unfortunately, they all miss the action. Who took the first lead? What weather-related obstacles did the skippers overcome? Who got lost? Was there a battle for second or third place the last 48 hours?

But GIS and partner technologies like GPS are changing how fans, enthusiasts, and supporters experience these races.

One such race, the Transat Monotype en Solitaire, is a course between Belle-Ile-en-Mer, southern France, and Marie-Galante in the French West Indies. Twenty-seven mariners sailing alone left March 25 for the 3,436-thousand mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Armed only with their skill, experience, and a GPS for tracking, they have to navigate the best route--northern or southern--each with its pros and cons. The northern route is shorter, but puts the sailors against the wind. The southern route is longer, but the winds may be more favorable.

By the halfway mark, three ships had already abandoned the race. A visit to the Web site and clicking “Cartographie” tells a good part of the story. You can see who’s ahead, who’s out of the race, and which course the skippers have selected.

To get details for each boat, you can click on the list of boats on the right and that boat will be circled. Or, click on the boat in the center of the map to get information about the boat’s skipper, location, and rank. You can pan, zoom, choose to see only the top three or click from a pull-down menu to see wind speeds (noeuds).

What technology is behind the online maps?

GPS coordinates showing the positions of each boat throughout the race are transmitted to a central location, where they are gathered, stored, and published using GIS. GIS software makes it easy to manage large amounts of real-time information, facilitates the combination of race-specific data with other layers, and enables the sharing of race information via the Web or other applications.

See more examples of Web sites using the same server-based technology.

GIS Is Providing a New Medium for Understanding

GeographyMatters — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:47:00 GMT

In a recent issue of ArcNews, ESRI President Jack Dangermond explains the new and expanding role of GIS professionals and outlines some of the underlying technologies that will support this vision. He also talks about the future of GIS on the Web and how that is making geographic knowledge easier to access and more available.

Geographically Enabling the Web

GIS technology is evolving on the Web, making geographic knowledge easier to access and more available. As the natural and cultural processes of the planet become more wired or "connected," we will increasingly see new geographic information services and communities of users who incorporate these services into their daily decision making. Some have called this new environment the GeoWeb—a geospatial dimension of the cyberinfrastructure.

What the GeoWeb Means

GIS on the Web will provide many new possibilities for sharing, integrating, and leveraging geographic knowledge. GIS professionals will increasingly make available (publish) their data, maps, spatial analysis models, and 3D visualizations as services for others to access and use. This will create a whole new way of thinking about GIS. Our combined services will provide a new distributed GIS that is open, interoperable, and dynamic. Individual systems and communities will use each other's services, breaking down the earth into components and allowing the dynamic integration of knowledge. The management of this knowledge will be distributed. Services will be interconnected to create new services, and as a result, various parts of organizations will become increasingly collaborative and interdependent. Eventually, these services will provide a global network of geographic knowledge for the planet that is widely accessible and reflects the dynamic changes occurring.

Read the complete article.

GIS and BI: The Geographic Advantage

GeographyMatters — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:28:00 GMT

GIS and business intelligence (BI) have traditionally addressed differing issues in organizations and have resided in mutually exclusive operational silos. Both technologies have matured into viable enterprise solutions that fit well in today's IT environments so it comes as no surprise that organizations are now looking to integrate the applications to improve the return on IT investment and improve overall business performance.

The BI community is looking to enhance the analytic capabilities of their applications because they now realize that location can have a profound impact on behaviors and outcomes. Furthermore, the ability of a map to present data as actionable information fits well with the BI trend to exploit visualization technology for more efficient communication.

The GIS community benefits from the ability of BI to create a common point of access to disparate organizational data sets. BI also provides very robust enterprise reporting environments which broadens and secures the distribution of GIS enhanced reports. Recently many BI platforms have incorporated sophisticated analytic applications which can now be leveraged by GIS.

This whitepaper provides an overview of the convergence of GIS and BI, the business case for integration, and various integration strategies in use today. It also briefly describes some of the more popular applications being deployed by various industries, such as retail, manufacturing, and financial services.

Geography Is Changing the Landscape of Retail

GeographyMatters — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:05:00 GMT

The use of GIS in retailing is about to undergo some major changes, says Simon Thompson, Commercial Industry Sector Manager at ESRI, in an article for Extended Retail Solutions.

Thompson points out that geography is becoming a unifying factor for visualizing business problems. GIS is allowing companies to consider many different possibilities easily – to understand potential, to review the impact of different investments, store and product configurations, and changing trends in the retail landscape.

Site selection is one of the most important components of a retailer's arsenal for success, and GIS can help to make this the most valuable. Understanding market facts, customer demand, product lines, and merchandize potential can be evaluated, modeled, and implemented using GIS.

One company that makes it easier for companies to find better sites using GIS is Site to Do Business (STDBonline). STDBonline offers an integrated market analysis system that provides one-stop shopping for demographic information, mapping technology, and reporting tools for any type of company. More than 17,000 members of the Certified Commercial Investment Members (CCIM) Institute, the governing body of the largest commercial real estate network in the world, use this site. They find it is a valuable resource for commercial and investment real estate experts as it gives them the information they need to more profitably analyze market potential and trends.

Read Taking a Different Route in Commercial Investment Real Estate (CIRE) Magazine, featuring STDBonline. Jay Lucas, STDBonline President will be a featured speaker at the 2007 ESRI Business GeoInfo Summit April 23–25, 2007 in Dallas, Texas.

Another company harnessing the power of GIS for retail is SNL Financial, a leading provider of business intelligence for users in America’s top companies and financial institutions. SNL collects, standardizes, and disseminates specialized business information for the banking, financial services, insurance, real estate, and energy industries through a Web portal called SNL Interactive (SNLi). Using GIS, SNLi customers are able to make more informed decisions when evaluating mergers and acquisitions because of SNLi Mapping. They can perform their own market analysis and integrate demographic data and geographic data.

Sara Hyland, SNL Financial, gave an insightful presentation called Developing GIS Applications for the Financial Community: Obstacles and Achievements, at last year's ESRI Business GeoInfo Summit on the implementation and benefits received from this endeavor.

These companies represent a growing trend that geography and GIS are becoming essential to retail success. GIS provides a more intuitive means to integrate multiple business viewpoints. Using GIS analysis, companies can take advantage of greater business visibility and a more complete view of performance compared to static reports and charts. The benefits and potential returns on investment of this enhanced view of business are staggering.

Geography Makes a World of Difference in Business

GeographyMatters — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:35:00 GMT

Adding a geographic component to business analysis provides clarity. Geography makes it possible to route customers to stores, find the best site, segment consumers for more targeted marketing and promotions, and identify the most profitable trade areas, to name a few.

In February's edition of Integrated Solutions for Retailers (ISR), Rudy Nadilo, CEO at GIS solutions provider geoVue explains that "retailers that haven't taken the power of GIS technology beyond route mapping and store locators are "missing the side of the barn.'"

Many businesses have not only found the side of barn, so to speak, but have made a bull'seye thanks to the benefits geography and geographic information systems (GIS) provide.

Do your customers need to find you? American Suzuki Motors has found Internet mapping makes it easier for potential buyers to find local dealers.

Do you need to find your customers? Sears Product Repair Services is using GIS to manage a fleet of more than 100,000 mobile workers.

You don’t have to be a big company to benefit from using GIS to manage mobile resources, as Apex Office Supply shows. This small company uses GIS to make the best use of its fleet and keep the company one step ahead of the big guys.

Coinstar has made a lucrative business from the loose change most Americans have jangling in their pockets and a lot of that success can be attributed to GIS. "We've seen a number of benefits including more informed planning and decision making, optimized allocation of resources, and improved performance," says John Chestnut, GIS analyst, Coinstar.

The Washington Times was able to analyze its subscribers accurately and increase both subscriptions and readership, all from looking at and analyzing demographics on a map.

Simon Thompson, ESRI, states in the ISR article, “The next sophisticated step for GIS concerns geomarketing—understanding a very deep-level analysis about individuals within specific geographies.” He goes on to say that this is being driven by the integration of GIS solutions with business intelligence (BI) and business analytics providers, such as geoVue, SAS, Information Builders , and BusinessObjects.

The marriage of BI and GIS capabilities is resulting in greater value from both applications. Much of this is through the unique charting capabilities of GIS in the form of spatial relationship and distribution charts.

For example, node-to-node supply chain performance data presented as bar charts or dashboards does not supply the location information needed for planning improvements. The same performance report presented as a map immediately shows spatial relationships between nodes that could explain variations in performance.

Want to know more? Read the white paper: GIS and Business Intelligence: The Geographic Advantage.

Businesses have no reason to miss the barn. You can apply the geographic advantage just as these companies have.

Online training, workshops and podcasts are available for learning at your own pace.
Many books are available on how to use GIS software and data as well as examples of real world applications.
Better yet, don’t miss the Business GeoInfo Summit coming to Dallas, Texas, April 23–25, 2007. This conference is recognized as the premier GIS forum for industry professionals and business executives.

Two-Year Anniversary of Indian Ocean Tsunami: Geography Matters to Disaster Recovery

GeographyMatters — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:31:00 GMT

As the two-year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami approaches, we are reminded how important geography and GIS technology are to rescue and recovery efforts. While it realistically may take decades for the affected communities in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand to recover, GIS was instrumental in the first phase after the disaster, continues to be during reconstruction, and is ensuring that communities are prepared for what may come next.

Read GIS Supports Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster Relief to learn how GIS assisted the Indonesian government and international relief agencies in the first months after this disaster.

Today, GIS continues to prove its usefulness as the Indonesian government's reconstruction and rehabilitation agency Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi (BRR) NAD-Nias coordinates spatial planning, village mapping, community planning, engineering design, and house building, while also working to build sustainable GIS capacity in the region.

GIS is managed in the Province by the Spatial Information and Mapping Centre (SIM Centre), an arm of the BRR and partially funded by the Norwegian government. The SIM Centre has created an online metadata catalog, a free service available to all relief agencies in the area. The metadata catalog provides guidance and accessibility to necessary data sets and establishes confidence in the quality of the data, something lacking in the area before the tsunami.

SIM Centre employs a staff of seven. To date, SIM Centre has trained 115 people on the use of GIS, filled approximately 700 client requests for GIS data, and printed more than 2,500 maps.

Says Yakob Ishadamy, SIM Centre Manager: "The area will continue to develop well after the international aid community has left the area. GIS has a role to play by providing information to government officials and others to support their efforts. The reconstruction, economic, and social factors involved all have a time and space component. GIS provides an invaluable framework for building an information base and providing the best decision support, communication, and collaboration possible."

To learn more, read an ESRI white paper on GIS for Tsunami Recovery.

Geography + GIS = The Perfect Vacation

GeographyMatters — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 14:26:00 GMT

Whether you're on vacation for the holidays or looking ahead to a summer break, GIS can help you plan a great vacation.

Many cities, states, and countries offer Web sites that cater to tourists. A quick search on the Internet can reveal a new way and interactive way to plan a vacation.

Washington D.C., for example, provides online mapping applications to help you plan your stay called the D.C. Guide. The site gives you tools to create your own map and begins by asking you to "Add Geography." From there you can "play" with an interactive map that includes aerial views and an option to print.

Going to England? Waterscape.com (by British Waterways) offers a variety of interactive maps to help you plan a vacation along Britain's waterways for walking, fishing, boating, or just shopping. For each map, you can add or remove layers representing various points of interest.

Of course, weather.com, by The Weather Channel, gives you current and forecast weather conditions for your destination, including satellite maps that show weather in motion. The site also offers travel guides so you can chose your next trip by location, weather, or activity.

Are you a skier? You can search for resorts with snow. If, on the other hand, you prefer golf, you can find places where the weather favors a round of 18 free from storms and high winds.

Jack Dangermond on Enterprise GIS

GeographyMatters — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:43:00 GMT

GIS has evolved to meet enterprise-wide needs much like the enterprise software evolutions in the financial, human resources, supply chain, and customer management arenas. An enterprise GIS is an integrated, multi-departmental system for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, managing, and disseminating geographic information. It includes the infrastructure, mission critical capabilities, and robust architectures associated with other enterprise software. It is intended to address both the collective and individual needs of an organization, and to make geographic information and services available to both GIS and non-GIS professionals.

The principal purposes of an enterprise GIS are to provide broad access to geospatial data, a common infrastructure upon which to build and deploy GIS applications, a common GIS data management framework, and significant economies of scale and resulting business value through organization-wide deployment and use.

Characteristics of an enterprise GIS include:

Organization-wide data availability-any authorized user who would benefit from geospatial data has easy access to it
Key to the achievement of mission critical business objectives
Scalable, extensible, reliable, and secure
Capable of being effectively integrated within the enterprise
Supports a wide range of technical and non-technical users through a robust set of GIS tools ranging from lightweight browsers to expert-level analytical, modeling, geodata management, and development programs
Organization-wide standards and governance processes-software, data, and infrastructure standards must be established and governed across the enterprise
Like other enterprise technologies, may be complex to implement-requires significant planning and support
Delivers a high return-on-investment

The manner in which an enterprise GIS is administered and managed depends on the needs, operational maturity, and even the culture of an organization. In some organizations, a centralized group performs the planning, implementation, and support of enterprise GIS data and infrastructure. In others, core data layers and related infrastructure are administered centrally while individual departments maintain the data and infrastructure specifically required to meet their unique requirements. There is no single enterprise GIS model that is right for everyone. The more complex the organization, the more thought needed to determine the optimal architecture, procedures, and governance processes.

Many ESRI users have successfully deployed enterprise GIS in their organizations including federal agencies, state and local governments, utility companies, national mapping organizations, and transportation agencies. Scott Bowman from the City of Fresno, California, and Linda Gerull from Pierce County, Washington, are two GIS managers with experience implementing an enterprise GIS.

Read their thoughts on this topic in an issue of ArcUser that included a special focus section on Managing a GIS.

A Post by Jack Dangermond: More Thoughts on the Benefits of GIS

GeographyMatters — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 21:05:00 GMT

Last month I wrote about educating upper management about the value and benefits of GIS. Now I would like to discuss these benefits in more detail.

Organizations of all sizes and users in almost every industry get value from GIS. They are increasingly interested in and aware of the economic and strategic value of GIS, in part because of the more standards-based technology, as well as the greater awareness of the benefits demonstrated by GIS users.

GIS enterprise solutions and IT strategies that include GIS are growing rapidly. The benefits of GIS generally fall into five general categories:

1. Greater efficiency resulting in cost savings. These are associated either with carrying out the mission—labor savings from automating or improving a workflow—or improvements in the mission itself. An example for both of these is Sears, which implemented GIS in its logistics operations and has seen dramatic improvements. Sears reduced the time it takes for dispatchers to create routes for their home delivery trucks by about 75 percent. It also reduced the costs of carrying out the mission, reducing drive time by 12-15 percent by selecting routes using GIS. Sears also improved customer service, increased efficiency with respect to return visits to the same site, and provided more efficient scheduling of customers.

2. Better decision making. This typically has to do with making better decisions about location. Common examples include real estate site selection, route/corridor selection, zoning, planning, conservation, natural resource extraction, etc. Making the correct decision about a location is increasingly seen as strategic to the success of an organization.

3. Improved communication. Maps and visualizations created using GIS greatly assist in understanding situations and story telling. They are a new language that improves communication between different teams, departments, disciplines, professional fields, organizations, and the public.

4. Better geographic information recordkeeping. Many organizations have a primary responsibility of maintaining authoritative records about the status and change of geography. Cultural geography examples are zoning, population census, land ownership, and administrative boundaries. Physical geography examples include forest inventories, scientific inventories, environmental measurements, water flows, and a whole host of geographic accountings.

GIS provides a strong system framework for managing these types of systems with full transaction support and reporting tools. These systems are conceptually similar to other information systems in that they deal with data management and transactions, as well as standardized reporting of changing information. However, they are fundamentally different because of the unique data models and hundreds of specialized tools used in supporting GIS applications and workflows.

5. Managing geographically. In government and many large corporations, GIS is becoming essential to understand what is going on. GIS information products are now being used to communicate among senior administrators and executives at the highest levels of government. They are providing a visual framework for conceptualizing, understanding, and prescribing action. Examples of this include conducting briefings about various geographic patterns and relationships including land use, crime, the environment, and defense/security situations.

GISs are increasingly being implemented as enterprise information systems. This goes far beyond simply spatial enabling of business tables in a DBMS. Geography is emerging as a new way to organize and manage organizations. Just like enterprise-wide financial systems transformed the way organizations were managed in the late twentieth century, similarly, GIS is transforming the way that organizations manage their assets, serve their customers/citizens, make decisions, and communicate.

Examples in the private sector include most utilities, forestry and oil companies, and most commercial/retail businesses. Their assets and resources are now being maintained as an enterprise information system, not only to support the day-to-day work management tasks, but also to provide a broader context for assets and resource management.

Specific examples of ESRI users gaining real benefits from GIS can be found at www.esri.com/casestudies.

GIS Industry Moving Closer to Society-wide Application

GeographyMatters — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:30:00 GMT

There are several important trends occurring in the GIS industry. The first is the growing volume of geospatial data coming from many sources. There is an increase in geographic measurement being driven by new technologies (i.e. satellite and airborne sensing, Lidar, GPS, and digital surveying) as well as by real-time sensors that are capturing data and making it available as Web services.

We also see increases in data being made available from workflows that regularly create and maintain GIS datasets (i.e., cadastral data, road information, etc.).

The use of various technologies, such as address geocoding, gazetteer referencing, and other geo-location matching techniques, is resulting in the georeferencing of nearly all types of information (tabular data, documents, photographs, CAD drawings, etc.).

GPS technology is becoming pervasive and making people increasingly aware of geospatial information. However, we see its greatest power for the GIS community in the areas of tracking assets, people, etc., and collecting professional grade survey measurements. ESRI is supporting this trend by adding more capability to directly integrate and use these various data types in its core product line.

The second trend is a growing interest in GIS services on the Web and in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment. The Web services environment offers some new and interesting opportunities for GIS users to provide greater access to their information and collaborate with others by combining (orchestrating) their services to create applications. This capability means that the information being maintained in individual GIS systems will be able to be used to create new applications by sharing data and services.

GIS on the Web tends to be easier to learn and use. As GIS becomes more available in this environment, people who are not familiar with GIS (teachers, professionals from many fields, and even citizens) will increasingly have access to knowledge previously only available to GIS specialists.

A third trend is the increasing geographic literacy of society. This is in part a direct result of the first two trends. Over time, there will be a growing demand for all of the capabilities and knowledge that GIS offers. Citizens, special interest groups, and professionals of all types will apply geography more in their thinking and behavior. In the software area, GIS continues to evolve in its mission and focus. It will continue to be a strong tool for individual productivity and projects, and also continue to expand into enterprise and society-wide applications. GIS servers will provide the framework for this.

While this trend started with software for serving maps and data on the Web, the release of ArcGIS Server 9.2 will dramatically extend this capability by providing the full power of GIS within the enterprise computing environment and on the Web. This environment “serves” the knowledge of GIS professionals in intuitive and ready to use Web clients such as ArcGIS Explorer. In terms of society-wide application of GIS, we are still only at the beginning. In the future, GIS users will build individual systems that serve their users better. This will deliver enormous benefits. Some users are starting to collaborate with other users to build new forms of Web-based systems that integrate information and services from multiple sources.

While some of this thinking is a few years out for many users, ESRI is interested in supporting our users and their work in these areas and will be building technology that is open, interoperable, and supportive of these kinds of collaborations.

GIS and geography are a powerful medium for communication and collaboration

GeographyMatters — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 17:04:00 GMT

The work of GIS users has clearly demonstrated the value of using geographic knowledge and GIS tools for applications in almost every discipline and field. Their efforts, together with the underlying technology, have stimulated a new geography-based approach to problem solving and thinking about our world. Many have characterized GIS as one of the most powerful of all information technologies because it focuses on integrating knowledge from multiple sources and creates a cross-cutting environment for collaboration.

In addition, GIS is attractive to most people who encounter it because it is both intuitive and cognitive. It combines a powerful visualization environment with a strong analytic and modeling framework that is rooted in the science of geography. This combination has resulted in a technology that is science-based, trusted, and easily communicated across cultures, disciplines, social classes, and languages.

Until recently, comparatively few people have had direct access to the capabilities that GIS provides. This is changing as GIS technology fully emerges on the Web. The combination of new GIS server technology and intuitive, easy to use Web clients will open up the domain of GIS to many more participants.

In this context, GIS technology can be thought of as a new medium for communication, not unlike newspapers, radio, television, and the Web. This medium is being used to help people better understand and collaborate as well as formulate and tell stories about conditions, situations, and events, and even forecast the future.

Over time, GIS will become more widely used to create a common understanding of what we as humans collectively know. This will provide many benefits to society and help us manage our future.

The work of authoring and serving geographic knowledge will largely be the domain of GIS professionals. While they will continue to create and apply geographic knowledge themselves, they will also increasingly support systems that allow other professionals in their organizations, as well as society at large, to have access to the power of GIS. This will mean that the influence of GIS will grow and provide a powerful medium for communicating our world.