Esri Australia has conducted research showing that IT professionals believe state-of-the-art mapping technology had the potential to increase their business success if it were understood better by C-level executives.
The research, conducted among 397 Australian businesses, shows 93 per cent of professionals who use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) identify it as being an important tool to achieve key business objectives.
However, 77 per cent believe their business executive teams still don’t have a good understanding of the value that GIS brings or could further bring to their organisation.
The research also shows that the majority of participants felt GIS was currently only used in a handful of departments. 83 per cent say the use of GIS is predominantly carried out by a dedicated GIS department, rather than being accessed by the whole organisation.
In addition, 74 per cent of respondents say their GIS stands alone or is only partially integrated with other corporate systems.
By integrating GIS into the whole organisation, Esri Australia claims its GIS implementation with Energex identified $500 million of new Energex assets, and delivered a $12 million return on capital.
Beyond these efficiencies, web-mapping applications can now make GIS tools available to every employee – on site or off – as well as customers, reducing the workload of GIS staff by removing simple mapping tasks from their responsibilities.
