The Road to Success: The Journey of an Enterprise Drone Program

In the world of drones, only one truth is consistent: no two drone programs are the same.

Since working at FlyFreely, I have had the privilege of working alongside some of the largest and most complex drone programs within Australia and New Zealand.

From asset inspections to security, there are seemingly endless uses for drones to save money within an organisation.

With an industry so new and evolving at breakneck speeds, we have found more enterprise organisations adopting drones yet struggling to grow a succesful and profitable drone program.

To combat this, we have boiled down the journey of a drone program into 6 key stages that we see almost all of our enterprise clients embark on!

Read below to learn about the journey of an Enterprise drone operation!

STAGE 0: Outsourcing

Every drone program must start somewhere; outsourcing is the perfect starting point for most organisations.

For a drone program to kick off, an organisation must first be able to prove a particular use case for drones will bring in a positive Return on Investment (ROI).

Outsourcing provides a relatively cost-effective and risk-free way of determining where drones can be used within the business.

Once a positive ROI use case for using drones has been made, the next step is to bring the operations in-house.

STAGE 1: Using Drones Internally

Stage one is the most exciting phase of a drone program. Buying your organisation's first drone, doing some basic training, and embarking on the lifelong journey of reading and understanding regulatory requirements.

This marks the beginning of an organisation's drone journey. In this stage, it is critical to start building out specific use cases for drones and to start looking at ways to make drone flights safer.

In this stage, the goal is to explore frequently outsourced work and to gather as much data without investing too heavily in equipment, training, and licences.

Once a business has established its use of drones, we progress toward building a team and beginning to map out some standard procedures.

STAGE 2: Improving Capabilities

Stage Two is the start of standardising your drone procedures. At this stage, an organisation looks at building a team to fly drones. Organisations may look at getting their Remote Operators Certification (ReOC).

At this stage, the goal is to start standardising procedures, keeping track of processes, and reducing risks/crashes.

Once an organisation has established a solid use case and started streamlining the process of collecting data, we progress onto Stage Three where we start preparing a scalable company wide drone procedure.

STAGE 3: Standardising Procedures

Stage Three is all about creating scalable procedures for drones. At this stage, an organisation would be looking at implementing a company-wide policy around drones and requires someone to manage and drive the drone program.

At this stage, we recommend setting up maintenance procedures, operational checklists, and a consistent approach to each mission i.e. mission plan > in-field checklists > Data reconciliation.

Once a standardised process has been established, including maintenance, company policies and the processes an organisation can begin to scale drone use across multiple business units.

STAGE 4: Multi-Department Scaling

Stage 4 is starting to reach the pinnacle of drone programs in the Australian and New Zealand regions. Most organisations we speak to are not at this level yet and are still trying to standardise procedures.

Stage 4 is all about scaling across business units. The focus in this stage is training up staff members, enforcing procedures, and assisting management with tools to approve and manage more missions.

This stage is about maximising the potential of drones in the business, trialling every potential use case and ensuring procedures stay consistent among all stages of the drone program.

Once Drone use has been standardised and adopted across the business, we can begin looking at more complex procedures.

STAGE 5: Deep Integration & Optimisation

Stage 5 is the pinnacle of a drone program, and there may only be a handful of organisations in Australia that currently sit at this stage. Not every organisation may need to reach this stage of drone use.

Stage five is about introducing complex procedures i.e., beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), VTOL flights and autonomous technology.

We recommend organisations looking to utilise autonomous drone technology in the near future strive to achieve a stage five drone program. At this stage a drone program should be extremely thorough and an organisation may look at achieving BARS accreditation to maintain excellency.

Learnings

While every enterprise drone operation is unique, everyone program follows the same journey.

Once you identify what stage you are sitting at, it becomes easier to break down your journey into an actionable plan.

I hope by reading this article you can start to understand the stage your drone program currently sits at and you can start to understand where you would like to take your drone program over the next 6-12 months.

If you would like to chat further about your specific drone program, feel free to reach out!

I love chatting with organisations about their current drone programs and would be happy to help create an action plan for growing your drone program.

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