The power of quantifying the impact of GIS in your organization
Quantifying the number of services, operational processes and programs that require GIS can yield compelling statistics. These statistics can then be used to raise attention at the executive level on the value and importance of GIS. Proxies like these can tell us about the health, status, magnitude and evolution of a GIS program in a brief, impactful package. In this blog post, Esri Canada management consultant Melissa Dick shares how one of her customers effectively summarized the impact of GIS for their operations in a single statistic, supporting their geospatial strategy’s success, and how you can do the same for your own organization.
In a recent strategy and implementation roadmap project with a medium-sized municipality, the group of stakeholders we worked with presented us with a spreadsheet summarizing all activities and services that it performs. This spreadsheet accounted for all activities and specified if they required GIS, whether through mapping, spatial analysis or location intelligence. From monitoring the road network, to maintaining inventories of heritage sites and buildings, to planning and supervising drinking water and wastewater service contracts, to processing subdivision permits, all activities with a geospatial element were accounted for.
Overall, across hundreds of activities delivered by dozens of business units and administered across several key service areas, over 50% were found to require GIS.
By quantifying the impact of GIS in this way, GIS staff were able to better communicate with leaders, especially in a time of increased demand for GIS tools and services. Having powerful single statistics like this 50% number helps justify to leaders why they should be investing in geo, supporting governance measures and buying in.
Enhance your GIS storytelling with powerful, single metrics
In many of the strategy engagements I work on, stakeholders clearly recognize the importance of GIS in their organization’s operations. I often hear statements like “GIS plays a central role in our business functions,” “we’re seeing increased interest and requests for GIS services across all business units” and “my team uses GIS every day; I don’t know how I would get my job done without it.” These anecdotes provide crucial context while describing the importance of GIS within an organization and how it is evolving over time.
But senior leaders often want more than pure qualitative context. In my experience, coupling these anecdotes with quantified metrics that serve as proxies to demonstrate the value of GIS makes a geospatial strategy more likely to grab senior leaders’ attention. Doing so also helps enhance their understanding of this technology’s importance at the enterprise level. Examples of these metrics include the number of key geospatial workflows, the number of users on the GIS platform and the number of staff with GIS training.
We work closely with clients to unearth some of those quantifiable metrics, put them in the spotlight and use them as a central chord or pillar around which we develop broader geospatial strategies.
Often, we find that more mature organizations clearly document their GIS success stories. Depending on the level of maturity of your own organization’s GIS program and whether you’re looking for a starting point, there are a few quick methods you can apply today to quantify proxies that will help you communicate the value of GIS to your organization.
Getting started
To get started, you’ll need to understand the utilization and adoption of GIS solutions, services and data within your organization. To determine the extent of your GIS use, consider these metrics:
- number of active users
- number of user licenses
- amount and size of geospatial datasets
- number of staff with access to datasets
- number of staff with GIS training
Work with your software administrator or human resources team to collect and summarize these metrics. Reviewing and updating these numbers over time can help shed light on your GIS program’s evolution and its increasing value to the organization.
Establishing a better understanding
Formalizing an IT ticket or other type of service management system to track and manage GIS service requests is a great way to monitor changes in service demands. Tracking changes in the number and nature of GIS-related requests through this kind of system, as well as the time required to respond to and close the requests, is an indicator of demand throughout an organization and can help right-size the supply side, in terms of expertise and capacity.
Take a look at the newly released GIS Request Management solution, which can help you organize your GIS activities and ensure that they are aligned with your GIS strategy or roadmap.
You can also capture performance metrics through usage reports and tools like the ArcGIS Monitor Server application. These more advanced tools provide detailed insights into system health, user activity and resource utilization, enabling you to identify trends, optimize performance and allocate resources more effectively.
Integrating these performance metrics with business intelligence platforms can further enhance decision-making by correlating GIS performance with organizational outcomes. This can in turn ensure that your GIS investments directly support strategic goals.
Conducting user satisfaction surveys and impact assessments is a third way of getting a better understanding of your system. This essentially refers to regularly surveying GIS users within your organization to gather feedback on the system’s usability, effectiveness and impact on their work.
By analyzing survey results and assessing how GIS tools and services have improved workflows, decision-making and productivity, you can quantify the value and benefits of your GIS investments. By better understanding user satisfaction and potential areas of improvement, you can ensure that your GIS program continues to meet organizational needs.
Getting a comprehensive view
Accounting for all activities that require GIS, as our customer discussed above did, yields information that you can use to describe your organization’s geospatial capabilities. Presenting this information on an Excel spreadsheet is a great start, but migrating this data to an interactive platform such as a dashboard would open the door for countless communications opportunities. Charts, summary statistics and gauges presented on a dashboard would allow you to quickly display insights, such as, in which service areas GIS capabilities are growing most rapidly.
Another advanced method you can use to measure the performance and value of your GIS is to conduct periodic GIS audits and benchmarking against industry standards or peer organizations. Our Location Intelligence 360 (Li360) service is one way you can outsource this work. Completing a strategic benchmarking exercise such as Li360 involves assessing the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of a geospatial program, identifying gaps and areas for improvement, and setting actionable goals based on best practices and comparative analysis.
Using numbers to tell your story
In conclusion, just as a map can often convey information more effectively than words and pictures alone, quantifiable metrics and statistics can help better illustrate the value of GIS for an organization. Our team of management consultants can help you identify the best approach to calculating and communicating these metrics, which can then generate key insights that you can use to summarize the value of GIS for decision-makers in your organization. By presenting impactful data to senior leadership in this way, you can build a compelling case for GIS program investment and growth.
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