18 | GEOSPATIAL STRATEGY ESSENTIALS FOR MANAGERS MATTHEW LEWIN
The key steps for building a geospatial strategy are to map the business needs, define success, configure the building
blocks, test for fit and plan for change.
Step 1: Map the Business Needs
A geospatial strategy begins with the business.
Start by understanding your organization's
business needs. Then translate them into
geospatial needs.
Understanding the Business Needs
The first step is to work with business
stakeholders to document their goals, strategies
and priorities. These aren't always documented
or even well understood so they can take some
effort to unearth. But don't skimp out on this
part. Understanding what the business needs
based on what it does or plans to do is the basis
of a great strategy.
Ideally, you'll conduct discovery exercises at
two levels: the organizational level and the
departmental level.
Organization-level discovery, involving senior
management, provides an understanding of
strategic context. Department-level discovery
produces an understanding of line-of-business
needs, challenges and opportunities.
If it goes well, you'll come away with a stronger
awareness of how location intelligence enables
your organization and where there are gaps.
The trick is organizing this knowledge so you
can develop a strategy. To do this, you need to
identify your organization's business capabilities
and group the business needs by the business
capability they impact.
Business capabilities are an expression of your
organization's most important activities. They
represent what your organization does, as
opposed to how they do it. Business capabilities
are ideal for strategic planning because they link
to business outcomes, which is what we want
to enable through geospatial solutions. They
also tend to cut across business functions, which
avoids reinforcing organizational silos.
I've written previously about using business
capabilities for strategic planning. I encourage
you to read that article for more detail.
Map the
Business
Needs
Define
Success
Configure
the Building
Blocks
Test for Fit
Plan for
Change
Identify
business needs
and translate
into geospatial
needs
Determine your
vision, guiding
principles
and desired
business
outcomes
Make strategic
choices and set
the strategic
direction
Evaluate the
viability of your
strategy
Iteratively plan
and execute your
implementation
roadmap
