GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
GIS benefits organizations of all sizes and in almost every industry and the number of GIS enterprise solutions and IT strategies that include GIS are growing rapidly. Since the emergence of GIS, governments have been heavily investing in geospatial technology such as mapping, spatial analysis or spatial decision support to serve as an aid for disaster management, security, or poverty suppression. In the private sector, such analysis can help retail businesses gain new information about their customers such as where they come from (generate trade areas), how often they visit the retail store, retrieve negative/positive reviews about the store using high-quality text-mining techniques, etc. The following points encompass the benefits of utilizing the power of GIS:
Evolution Maps helps businesses make intelligent decisions on how to pinpoint their audience and spend their money wisely with the greatest returns. Costs associated with carrying out the mission (i.e., labor savings from automating or improving a workflow) or improvements in the mission itself. Logistics operations dramatically improve their delivery service and costs by considerably reducing time by optimizing routes. Businesses schedule appointments more efficiently improving customer service, by reducing the number of return visits to the same site.
Leaders are realizing that making correct decisions about location is strategic to the success of their businesses and organizations. Common examples include physical site selection, route/corridor selection, zoning, planning, conservation, natural resource extraction, etc.
People are beginning to realize that making the correct decision about a location is strategic to the success of an organization. GIS-based visual maps improve communication between different teams, departments, disciplines, professional fields, organizations, and the public.
Many organizations have a primary responsibility of maintaining authoritative records about the status and change of geography (geographic accounting). Cultural geography examples are zoning, population census, land ownership, and administrative boundaries. Physical geography examples include forest inventories, biological inventories, environmental measurements, water flows, and a whole host of geographic accountings. GIS provides a strong 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 (e.g., maps) 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.
In government and many large corporations, GIS is becoming essential to understand what is going on. Senior administrators and executives at the highest levels of government use GIS information products to communicate. These products provide a visual framework for conceptualizing, understanding, and prescribing action. Examples include briefings about various geographic patterns and relationships including land use, crime, the environment, and defense/security situations. GIS is increasingly being implemented as enterprise information systems. This goes far beyond simply spatially enabling 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 ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, 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 to support day-to-day work management tasks and provide a broader context for assets and resource management.
GIS provides a very effective means for graphically conveying complex information. Layouts created with a GIS are extremely useful when included in reports and presentations.
A GIS database can link all of your organization’s digital data together based on a location, such as address. This could enable all departments of an organization to have access to, and share the same data, and ensure all departments and individuals are using the most up-to-date information. Better access to better quality and time-relevant data may help your organization make better decisions.
Websites can be developed with GIS software for either the internet or a company intranet which can help your company, organization or department effectively convey information to members of a private group, or to the public at large. Maps can be created dynamically and served over the web.