Paper maps remain at the core of what many commercial real estate GIS departments produce. In this fast paced sales environment often these maps are needed yesterday. But this maybe about to change. The popularity of mobile devices: smartphones and tablets, and advances in mobile GIS technology could mean the dominance of paper maps in commercial real estate is ending.
Mobile GIS & LBS
Posts Tagged ‘GIS’
New ways to visualize and analyse property data in commercial real estate
Thursday, May 8th, 2014GIS opportunities … looking for nuggets of gold
Friday, May 2nd, 2014
If we all look in the same place we will never find those elusive nuggets of gold.
I read that sentence years ago, and it always stuck in my mind. To me it meant set your own path, don’t follow the herd. The most discussed and publicized opportunities are no longer opportunities. Discover the yet to be discovered.
As GIS comes out of the shadows, opportunities abound. The audience for, and applications of the technology has dramatically increased. But like gold the opportunities are not sitting on the surface, they are there to be discovered. Go where everybody else is looking and success may well be elusive. Read what the GIS community is discussing; hot topics and trends. New, focused conferences are popping up left and right. All very interesting, and no doubt valid, but …..
Where does GIS fit into business intelligence?
Tuesday, April 29th, 2014
We often hear that GIS is moving beyond its traditional user base. Business applications of the technology are a new and exciting area; integration with SAP and Cognos, location analytics and Esri Maps for Office …..
Increasingly more of my time is now spent discussing business location intelligence. These are not your standard GIS conversations. Firstly the term GIS is never used; location technology, location platform, location strategy are all preferred. Second, these are often discussions on what is missing in current business intelligence systems (BI). The short video below steps through a business case for location technology in the outdoor advertising space:
Showing ROI for your GIS
Wednesday, April 16th, 2014Return on investment or ROI is a slippery fish.
Think about this. My daughters 6 month old uncomfortable football boots (soccer cleats in US) ripped apart last week. $70 down the drain. No doubt a poor ROI.
My $120 Adidas boots sit gleaming in my closet. Sometimes gracing the field. But chronically underused. A poor ROI?
Here lies our little conundrum. How do we define and measure ROI? If we have an expensive resource and it under-performs, we might suggest a poor ROI (the opposite might also apply in the case of over-performing). But what if we under-use or do not fully utilize a resource? (more…)
Solving the shapefile conundrum: mobile sharing and editing
Sunday, April 13th, 2014We get this question asked often:
“How do we load a shapefile on our smartphone or tablet, allow our team to edit said shapefile on their respective mobiles, then consolidate all edits back into a single shapefile?”
Ours is a three word answer:
“Use the cloud”
If there is any discussion which best illustrates the power of cloud computing it is this one. Today systems like ArcGIS Online and GISCloud make it easy to publish your shapefiles to a single accessible layer. Now your team can load this single source on their mobile device, make their edits, sync and they are done. Nothing could be easier. (more…)
Retail and the ArcGIS Platform
Monday, March 31st, 2014
We are over-users of the word exciting. But truly these are great times to be working in the location services and GIS fields. Not only is location technology being used more widely and by ever more diverse groups of users, but new sectors and vertical are emerging. Retail in particular presents a fascinating world of opportunity.
Esri have put considerable focus on retail GIS. (more…)
5 Cool Uses of Mobile Offline Maps
Tuesday, February 4th, 2014Mobile applications require networking. Not any more: here we discuss 5 breakthrough offline use cases available now!
How often do you find yourself without mobile Wi-Fi connectivity? More often than you would like. Maybe you are in a remote area; working, possibly hiking, boating or fishing. Maybe you do not want to exhaust your mobile data plan. Its quite possible your mobile device has no outdoor Internet connectivity. Lower cost tablets only provide direct home or office based network connectivity and have no 3G/4G providing mobile data capabilities. Even if you have a tablet with networking service built-in from the telephone carriers, the service is inconsistent at best and sometimes it doesn’t exist.
This is a huge disappointment because tablets and smart devices have a great deal to offer businesses and consumers of all types, especially those that marshal resources to the field with the dreaded pen and paper. But until we can solve how we collect data of all types, integrate it into our workflow seamlessly, and do that in an occasionally connected world, we are going to remain in the stone age with pen and paper use by field staff.
The wait is over
Since we are mobile map and GIS experts, in this post we will describe 5 cool uses of mobile offline maps.
(more…)
Stepping Into The Brave New Cloud Enabled Mobile GIS World
Thursday, January 16th, 2014Cloud and mobile technology are ….
Confusing and complicated.
Hard to fit into “how we have always done things”
Difficult seeing and demonstrating the benefits to management.
We have heard these responses and many more from clients. Stepping into the brave new cloud enabled mobile GIS world is hard. But the benefits are considerable. (more…)
GIS in 2014 is Simpler and Cheaper
Tuesday, January 7th, 2014True: GIS in 2014 is simpler and cheaper.
Why? Cloud services and low cost (mobile) hardware.
Simple? Let others host and maintain while you focus on the solution.
Our conclusion from conversations over 2013 was that many still see GIS as this complex system. They have nightmares remembering GIS technology choices, licensing fees, tuning/maintaining/upgrading servers, publishing data. But their thinking had still to move forward.
(more…)
Powerful New Ways to Apply GIS in 2014 – Part 1
Friday, December 27th, 2013Setting the Stage – GIS in 2013
GIS was once a niche technology. It was expensive, and used largely by those who had geospatial training. In 2013 that picture began to change. GIS is undergoing a rapid evolution. The increasing popularity of cloud computing, and mobile devices: tablets and smartphones, have helped broaden the appeal, and reduced the cost of location technology. In this article we will discuss this evolution and look at powerful new ways to apply GIS in 2014.
