The biggest problem your geospatial managers face is your process.
Your business has made a significant investment in geospatial data and you've assembled a dedicated team to manage and leverage this valuable resource. This new asset is key to your overarching strategy to meet compliance, get a competitive edge, and save both financial and human resources.?
The team you hired to manage and analyze this geospatial data is excellent. You’re lucky to have perfectly qualified true experts in the field, who are passionate about your mission. Now that you’ve appointed the right people for the job, you expect regular updates, clear metrics, and robust reports on ROI from these data projects.?
But there is so much friction to meeting these deliverables. You’re wondering how this could be—is it the people you hired? Is it the data? Is it some external variable that you can’t control?
We’re here to tell you that it’s not that your technical team isn’t yielding the results you want.
It’s that your processes aren’t aligning and adjusting to the modern world of geospatial data.?
What you might not realize is that your team is often bogged down by administrative work and challenges related to managing your expectations.?
Does this mean people don’t have to be accountable for their work or ever answer to their data??
Of course not.?
But there is a way to detect if the processes are as optimal as possible to help them focus on strong analyses and get you your ROI.
Here are four things your geospatial data team may be struggling with that limit its potential and slow down your ROI insights.?
Your geospatial experts need to manage assets such as imagery, code, analysis documentation, presentations, and so on, which may be spread across different locations. Just like any organization, they will have to organize administrative tasks using tools like Google Drive or Dropbox and find a method to keep track of these assets. This can be relatively simple with a small team, but as the organization grows, or geospatial data use expands into different departments or branches/locations, it becomes more complex.
Keeping the data organized in a coherent yet accessible manner can be a challenge. When managing various areas of the organization and tracking these assets, several limitations may arise, including duplicate purchases, data-sharing issues, and controlling expenditures. Resorting to an enterprise turnkey solution or an asset management system is a common step to keep these factors under control. However, customizing generic solutions to meet the needs of a geospatial team can consume a lot of time and resources, involving manual organization and planning.?
If the goal is to make your employee’s lives easier, you’re unintentionally adding more work to their plate, which is making their lives harder. The team needs a solution designed for geospatial work to manage file sizes, track objectives specific to their roles, and to centralize purchases.
2. It’s difficult to share data with you
You've hired geospatial experts for a reason—you can't do their work yourself. It's not surprising that when updates or imagery are shared, it's usually a polished image with a clear and curated story around it. This is because the raw data would be overwhelming for you and you don't need all of the nuances around it—you just need to get to the point. However, you still want visibility. Asking to see everything doesn’t help, as you’re not a geospatial expert and it's challenging for you to work with the data. If you want to only see the pieces that are important for your evaluation of ROI, it's a challenge for your geospatial team because they have to take the time to prepare and share these massive files (that can't be shared easily via email because they're too large). They'll have to upload it to a shared drive, but you won’t have the right programs to open TIFF files (the typical format of satellite imagery), so they have to convert it for you. What should be a simple click to share the data turned into multiple steps.
3. Controlling the budget can slip away with miscommunications easily
Let’s create a scenario which you may have seen in your team.
You have multiple locations and allocate different teams for different projects. Team A purchased an image to analyze a specific area of interest at one of your plants. They had the budget and permission to buy this data, so they believed they were following the proper procedures. However, when their manager reviewed their spending, they noticed that the item purchased was very similar to one that Team B had bought a few months earlier. Further investigation revealed that the same data had been purchased twice. While no one acted improperly, it's evident that data was not being shared across teams, which resulted in unnecessary duplication of purchases. Only a select few individuals are authorized to buy satellite data, but even with the right people making purchases, the lack of visibility into other teams' data options led to these duplicates.
This may seem like a minor issue, but it serves as another example of how your geospatial data manager feels a lack of control over their operations. Let's be honest, this won't reflect well on them during a board meeting.
Small issues like this can accumulate over time.
4. Purchasing the data they need is a pain
It can be challenging to manage spending, but acquiring the necessary data can be just as difficult. Depending on the method of acquiring data, there can be numerous steps, budget constraints, and wait times involved in obtaining the required information.
Finding a suitable data provider, obtaining quotes, and getting budget approvals, which often require a minimum spend and commitment, are all part of the cumbersome process of data acquisition. Additionally, waiting in a queue until it's your team's turn to receive the data adds to the delay.
Ensuring that the team has the necessary insights for their analysis, ultimately contributes to more significant goals, such as environmental monitoring. However, the payoff may feel delayed.
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These pain points are not productive and may slow down your team's progress.
So, how can you support your geospatial team to do its best work and remove these pain points?
You need to provide your team with an enterprise organizational tool that is made for geospatial experts.
When searching for a tool that can accommodate the needs of your geospatial team, here are the features you want to look for.
Purchase and host data?
Control spending with assigned projects and budgets
Manage users and approve specific action
Different payment method options
Could you build this yourself??
Absolutely.?
Do you want to build this yourself??
Probably not.
Here is one that exists: https://skywatch.com/products/hub