Solving GIS Problems...or GIS Solving Problems!

In attending the major GIS conferences, I always come away with the impression that there must not be very many GIS success stories. All are the problems organizations are having in implementing their GIS. Or, how they solved their GIS problems - not how GIS solved their problems.
      For one thing, I believe that GIS is being over sold as some miracle information system that will solve all of your needs. That was fine for the early adopters - who buy technology, for technology's sake. However, the majority of a market does not want GIS, or Remote Sensing, or GPS. They just want to run their businesses, be successful and happy.
      What is happening, now, is that many of the GIS vendors are going after the business geographics market. What is the business geographic market, anyway? The problem is that many of the vendors in this industry have already saturated the early adopters in their traditional markets. So, they go after the early adopters of the new emerging markets such as real estate, banking, retail, market demographics, etc. They realize that the early adopters are the easy "marks." The early adopter, in any given industry, will buy the technology the vendors are selling them, and they will tinker, tweak, fiddle, and work to get it to run properly.
      And, even so, most GIS users are only using a fraction of their systems' capabilities. Either they cannot get it to do all the things it is meant to do, or, they do not need all the capabilities built into the system they bought. Which then leads one to conclude that the GIS was probably over sold - and the customer could have gotten by with a system considerably less complex, less robust, and much less expensive.
      Since I am merely an observer and chronicler of the industry and do not profess to understand the technology, I really do not know what the differences are between what ESRI, Genasys, GDS, MapInfo, Stategic Mapping, Tydac etc. sell, and what product is right for what type of organization. Why one organization needs a very robust system while a similar organization, in the same industry is able to get by very well with a considerably lesser system in price and capabilities? Why some organizations get by perfectly well doing all their mapping in CAD, and others need GIS, yet do little more with it than mapping?
      We all would like to have the greatest, most efficient automation and information systems. However, in the real world we are all limited by our expertise, our recognition of the problem at hand, our capabilities to solve those problems, and our resources. It is like the Rolling Stones said, "You can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes, you get what you need."
      I find it frustrating to see users of the GeoTechnologies not really getting their money's worth. The reason for that is that this industry has been doing a pretty good job of selling their specific technology. However, they have not been focused on solving the customer's problem.
      It is like the old joke in this industry, "What is the difference between a used car salesman and a GIS salesman? The difference is that the used car salesman knows when he is lying."
      Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School said, "Sales is getting rid of something you have - marketing is creating something you can get rid of." This industry is not marketing. It is still too busy selling what they have, as opposed to creating something that the customer wants.
      A good example of a company listening to what the customers wants, what his problems are, and providing a solution is Condor Earth Technologies, Inc. (CET). They have a large client in the mining industry. This mining company was getting "hit on" by all sorts of GIS vendors. But, the mining company did not want a full blown, enterprise-wide GIS - or any type of GIS, Remote Sensing, or GPS. All they wanted was to expand their mine. In order to do that they had all sorts of compliance and regulatory issues they needed to solve, and provide to the various regulating bodies.
      Barry Hillman, president of CET came in and said, "...OK, we will solve your problem - we will provide you with all the information and reports that you need to meet your objective." I am over simplifying the process, but he got the contract.
      So, Condor went off and used aerial photography, GPS surveys and data collection, put it all into a GIS, and proceeded to solve their customer's problem. In the end, the customer was able to expand their mine, and Condor gave the customer the GIS with all the data, maps and reports they used to do the job, free of charge. In the overall perspective of the project, the cost of the GIS and data were irrelevant. And so, the customer ended up getting their GIS anyway.
      Until we start listening to, and providing what the customer wants, as opposed to what our software engineers want, we are only creating more problems, not solving them. And, we will continue to hear about them at the conferences.

Cheers!

Roland Mangold

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