GIS under the hood for business

1. Business driven
spatial thinking
Andrew Zolnai
www.zolnai.ca

2. What does Business need?
• Track its assets
– Location
– Expense
– Revenue
– Audit-trail
• Report on its assets
– Inside: ISO
– Outside: SOX

3. What does Businesses not need?
• New for Newness’ sake
– Disrupt what works already
– Creates downtime
– Increases recovery time
• Immutable attitudes
– Not invented here
– Ad-hoc procedures
– If it ain't broken, don't fix it

4. What works
• Simple Q&A systems
• Fit to the audience
• Google Search -> My Search
• GPS phones and PDAs
• Keep it under the hood
• Improve work flows
• Add score-cards
From 90% time gathering data
...to 90% time analysing data
(Hurricane Katrina Response Team
www.idw.com, www.microsoft.com)

5. What works 2
• Automobiles as a past analogue
– Mercedes Benz once thought the car market related to
the number of available chauffeurs
– Today we neither know nor care how an ignition starter
works...

6. What do users want
• Intuitive map interfaces
– Google Earth
• Yet geodetic accuracy
– National Geographic Map
Machine

7. What do users want 2
• That will speak to
audiences
• Public: posters
• DBA: web map services
Natural Resources Canada
http://nrcan.gc.ca

8. The solution
• Model the work process
– Interview users
– Build a model (1)
– Refine it to fit its use
– Run it iteratively
– Display the results
– Get user feedback
– Go back to 1...

9. The solution 2
• Listen to the user
– Absorb their work process
– Be lead by their experience
– Stick to their knitting
• Cooperate
– They needn't learn
geomatics
– You needn't acquire
their expertise

10. Lessons learned
• Business process first
– Stakeholders / Regulators
– End users / Administrators
• Geospatial technique next
– Model the process
– Find tools that fit...
• Everything has a
location component
Land use classification at continental scales –
LADA Stratification Task Force – www.fao.org