The GIS Industry
In the modern era, one industry has undoubtedly managed to entrench itself into nearly every part of our lives: Geographic Information Systems.
From private enterprise to public policy, daily life and future tech, GIS provides the ability to store, visualize, analyze, and interpret the space around us. The data processed in GIS can assign place, time, and shape to arguably anything with real-world application.
With this in mind, the capabilities of spatially mapping data have allowed GIS to be leveraged for multiple different purposes in business. As this ecosystem grows larger, new systems and technology are being developed to accommodate the new demands such as three-dimensional (3D) mapping.
Such demands have shown the growth of GIS for industries that may have never seen their use case before. Now more than ever, GIS is solving some of the more complex business decisions to date.
What Are GIS Services?
GIS services can be a wide range of services such as UAV digital mapping, solution engineering, or spatial data collection/development. Services such as these can allow businesses to produce successful geospatial solutions.
UAV digital mapping can construct high-resolution orthophotos (aerial imagery), 3D models, 3D point clouds, etc., to represent landforms.
Solution engineering brings organization-specific ideas or use cases to applications. It allows for developing out-of-the-box solutions or custom functionality for unique workflows.
Spatial data collection/development collects and formulates geographic information for usability and accessibility. These are only a subset of examples for GIS services, as there are many other specific niches within GIS.
GIS For Business
Many businesses have different sources of information that affect business decisions. GIS can operate as a series of new avenues in deriving analytical data for such decisions, whether that’s surveyed data through client-facing forms and applications or monitored spatially mapped features.
GIS brings value to companies by the ability to tailor the system specifically to an organization’s needs. Experts in the field can produce solutions for use cases like environmental impact, asset management, utility networks, etc.
The options are almost limitless for using GIS for business applications. How we choose to use it will ultimately affect how much we receive from it.
As mentioned before, we can affect real-world business decisions from our results within GIS. This could be a difference in whether or not a company is profitable in its land assets by tracking the revenue generated at each asset location.
Tied together as a single feature class for the assets, we can perform summary statistics to provide us with a profit or loss estimate across all assets. Consolidating this information into a visual map provides a business representative with a monitoring tool across these assets.
Symbology can be introduced to narrow down points of interest (POIs) for the assets that fall outside of the business set criteria. As the geospatial data continues to be updated, this monitoring map can become a vital piece to business decisions.
The Competitive Nature
Competition in the GIS industry is often looked at as the opposite and, more so, in the sense of collaboration on developing solutions to empower not only one business sector but others. New and exciting concepts can stem from one area of GIS but be leveraged in an entirely different way in other areas.
These concepts can possibly create a slight edge in one area but not without the benefit from another. Businesses may seek the use of GIS within their organizations to produce this result but can also find opportunities for joint business relationships that benefit multiple parties.
GIS can provide businesses with a suite of tools to drive a strong geospatial competitive advantage in comparison to competitors not actively implementing it. Through GIS services, businesses can explain their problems and work with solution engineers to best fit their use case without a major GIS undertaking.
Does your organization require GIS services? Interested in exploring more ways your business could leverage GIS? Contact GEO Jobe today at connect@geo-jobe.com for a free consultation! We are eager to support your GIS initiatives!
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