37 | GEOSPATIAL STRATEGY ESSENTIALS FOR MANAGERS MATTHEW LEWIN
Where Next?
To this point, I've described a specific business
scenario and provided an example of using
the geospatial lens to identify opportunities. In
practice, you would continue this process for
each desired business outcome identified.
From there, you would compile the geospatial
opportunities into a single opportunity
profile. This becomes the overall functional
blueprint of your technical solution. In our
example, you would have the basis of a voting
place management solution—but you don't
have to stop there. You could roll this up a
level to consider other aspects of election
day management, such as election outreach
and election results production. The result
would be a solution definition for election day
management. It's up to you how broad you go.
Keep in mind, working through this process
won't tell you what technologies to implement.
It's intended to uncover opportunities, not
detailed technical specifications. The value is
that it helps you clarify what a geospatial solution
will contribute and how it will be used to inform
decision making.
Armed with your functional blueprint, you would
set out to do a proper solution evaluation. This
involves identifying the building blocks of your
solution and evaluating fit and feasibility. This
could involve exploring off-the-shelf solutions
or custom options. There are volumes written on
that subject; I won't dwell on it here.
Ultimately, these opportunities should inform a
geospatial strategy. You can certainly prospect
for opportunities area-by-area, but the best bang
for your buck is if you work broadly across the
entirety of your business. Identify opportunities
that span the organization and use them as
the basis of your strategy. That way, you move
beyond one-off solutions toward a greater
organizational capability.
Right now, there are business problems in your
organization, ripe for a geospatial solution. The
geospatial lens is a simple but powerful tool to
help you get started on identifying some truly
amazing opportunities to put the power of
"where" to work.
