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Written by Amy Zeller, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Intergraph Corp
18 June 2012
For far too long, the utility of geospatial solutions has been locked in the domain of professionals who are highly trained in GIS. While these experts play a major role in incorporating geospatial data for decision-making within the enterprise, non-GIS users are often completely disconnected from the overall geospatial lifecycle of information.
As many of us are GIS experts, we often take for granted that there’s a major audience of undeveloped users who can leverage the geospatial data we manage to make an organization even more effective. Between those working with a rigid and technically demanding desktop GIS and a static lightweight browser-based GIS there exists a large potential user base that has yet to be engaged. To ensure that even more information is accurate and up-to-date, these non-GIS users can be empowered with location-based workflows for updating geospatial information, including intuitive tools for advanced functionality such as vector editing, redlining and dimensioning.
By removing the growing disparity between the status quo and what a GIS needs to be, organizations should be able to equip all users with the power of GIS -- breaking down the walls of legacy that have resulted in closed, passive and one-dimensional systems. More importantly, by empowering non-GIS users, enterprises are more able to enhance the power of their geospatial data, and make it a core part of their business processes.
This requires a new approach that has not yet been achieved in the geospatial sector, and this is where the concept of the "smart GIS" comes into play. Most organizations would be more effective by working outside of the passive and limiting departmental deployments of the GIS that have plagued them for decades. With a smart GIS, a single deployment can be configured for an unlimited number of applications - and geographic changes are easily and interactively implemented enterprise-wide.
Fortunately, there are new solutions that allow organizations to create a single deployment that can be configured for an unlimited number of applications. Users can now implement geographic changes across an entire enterprise, enabling seamless integration into configurable workflows. In addition, users from multiple departments can leverage advanced geospatial functionality, streamlining their processes and honing their overall abilities and expertise. Now a larger group of individuals and departments across an organization can create data, maps and reports for their projects, as opposed to this function falling in the lap of the GIS specialist.
What makes these new innovations possible for non-GIS users to leverage are efficient, customer-specific workflows and a simple user interface that guides users with task-specific forms and processes for web editing of geometries and attributive data.
Providing the utmost flexibility, these workflows are sustainable and support ongoing, long-term business processes.
Thanks to this new paradigm shift, organizations can create a smarter world where geographic information is the key ingredient to jumpstarting business critical workflows for the purpose of better understanding our changing earth.
About the Author:
Amy Zeller is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Intergraph Corporation. In this position, she is responsible for helping steer the product strategy for a number of server-based products, including Intergraph’s GeoMedia Smart Client.
