The Key To A Successful Geospatial Strategy – Don’t Start With Yourself!
At the upcoming GIS Managers Summit, @JamesPardue2 will be talking about how many of your peers have successfully developed a strategy to apply GIS to their business needs. Of all the Esri customers Jim has helped with, to drive a strategy, they all started with three key roles. The key to these roles is to include people from the beginning, who are not GIS users like you.
Jim will be highlighting these key roles next week, and if you’re joining us at the summit, you can consider the following, and come prepared with some ideas of who that might be in your organization:
Briefly, the first role is the champion, of course, the person who will evangelize GIS in your organization. As a GIS Manager, that may likely be you, but could be someone who works closely with you. You likely already have one or more ideas of who that might be.
The second and third roles, however, will likely be those who do not work with GIS technology, but who see the potential benefits and understand the technical needs.
An executive sponsor is someone who is invested in the vision and goals of your greater organization – this may not be someone who even thinks about GIS, but what matters is that they get motivated about the impact GIS can make. Beyond that, they also need to be a good resource in getting the right people in your organization to the table with you, in your strategy. Think of people in your organization who demonstrate a commitment to your mission and an investment in key people around the organization, and often it’s best to have as many as needed, to cover each part of your organization.
In the process of applying GIS strategically to your business, you’ll need someone who can bring an understanding of the technical capabilities, now and future-state, of your organization. Good potential members of the technical leadership part of your strategic team, are those who have a direct role in your enterprise technologies and related initiatives, so they will not likely be invested only in GIS technology, but will understand how it can fit alongside your complete technology stack. Think of the people who are IT-centric and roll out new capabilities to your organization.
The Champion, Executive Sponsor, and Technical Leadership are the three critical roles to your successful application of GIS across your organization – we’ll be talking more about them at the GIS Managers Summit on July 8, so bring your ideas of who these are in your organization – we hope to see you there!
