View everything you do through a geospatial prism. A mindset is defined as an established set of values. For many this can be a new approach and perspective when you start taking a business minded approach to GIS. One business-minded aspect that you should take is that your users are customers. It does not matter if you are from the private, government or academic sectors. GIS shops, sections, teams, or organizations provide products and services. I have found that the most successful GIS organizations are those that recognize this and view their end users as customers. A customer is defined as a party that receives or consumes products (goods and services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers. This generally describes end users of GIS products. Client, consumer, clientele, end user all work, but I prefer to reference them as customers and take a customer centric approach when dealing with them. If you understand this, thus understanding that you must take care of your customers, you start to rethink your entire approach to what your GIS team provides and the standard and manner in which it provides those services and products. No matter where you work, by understanding the value of integrating your GIS capabilities across all business lines of your organization, you then enable and empower users to take advantage of location intelligence that supports better business decision making by fully integrating business intelligence into operations for your customers.
