Building your ArcGIS runway. Huh?

Looks like I’ve been overdoing the Christmas eggnog. ArcGIS runway’s …. whatever next?

Stick with me here. Somewhere inside of today’s blog might be that Christmas present you forgot to open until now. Onward.

Runway? What could we mean here .. see our post An ArcGIS Jumpstart is like trying to fly without a parachute for an introduction. From our work with clients, and what we have discovered, we have moved away from quick introductions to ArcGIS Online. So called Jumpstarts. Success with ArcGIS is based on two key elements:

1. Data, data, data – No data, inaccurate data, data which does not tell the story. Like your fancy new car .. you’ll get nowhere without fuel. Everything with ArcGIS starts with data.
2. Web GIS expertise – GIS has become cheaper. Basic GIS tasks have become easier. Easier, not easy. In our ArcGIS Solutions Pyramid these tasks would fall into tiers 1 and 2. For those with no experience with ArcGIS or a background in desktop ArcGIS, Web GIS is a new paradigm.

If your business needs are simply seeing ‘points on a map’ and your data is accurate maybe an ArcGIS Jumpstart is just what you need. But, from our experience, business ‘where’ questions usually go much deeper than simplistic visualization. Business’ are complex, ‘where’ questions are both wide and deep.

Can you answer where questions if you do not understanding geospatial data nor Web GIS respectively?

A silly question I know.

Data preparation and publishing is what we mean by building your ArcGIS runway. Data is the lifeblood of your business. Centralized, accurate, complete, accessible across your organization. Success in business is ever more about being data driven. ArcGIS is designed to allow you to visualize and analyse your location based data. That is any and all data with an address or point in space. And do you know what we have found?

A key barrier for organizations new to ArcGIS is data.

Based on what we have learned, we have developed a process to move clients forward with ArcGIS, called our Solutions Engine. And data is our first area of focus. We start by building out that ArcGIS runway. This is a runway we extend over time.

With the runway successfully built, attention can turn to the ‘where’ questions. Answers might require data enrichment, a COTS or GeoAppSmart solution. One answer often leads to many other questions.

Understanding the capabilities and possibilities ArcGIS brings to your business is one of our key goals. Subscribing to ArcGIS Online then turning away due to a lack of understanding of how to build your runway is a massive lost opportunity for both you and your business.

Categories: ArcGIS Online, Mobile ArcGIS, Mobile GIS, Web and mobile GIS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2016 at 7:21 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.