At ESRI, we have worked with many of our users to help them educate their organizations' executives on the value of GIS. It has been our experience that senior managers in industries that make substantial use of GIS have come to recognize its value and the extent to which their organizations rely on it. However, there's more that we need to do to provide objective evidence of GIS's benefits, especially in industries where GIS is still emerging as a key technology.

When we meet with our customers' senior managers, the discussions are generally focused on broad business needs and issues. Put simply, executives are seeking better, faster, and cheaper solutions. One of our favorite case studies is about Sears, where they invested 3-4 million dollars and saved 50 million dollars each year while improving customer service and reliability. Every industry that depends on GIS has similar stories, and we are working to collect, organize, and publish these for our customers.

While senior IT managers give attention to business value and ROI, they also look carefully at security, scalability, interoperability, and support for standard architectures and computing platforms. CIOs are also very focused on enterprise integration and how well a given technology and its associated applications can be incorporated into their IT environment. When we discuss these matters with our customers' senior IT managers, we offer examples of how ESRI technology is meeting these needs, and how we can continue to build IT-compliant products and solutions.

As GIS continues its evolution as a mainstream technology used in mission-critical activities, we expect senior managers to engage more in GIS selection processes and purchasing decisions. In so doing, they will help drive better research and case studies on the benefits of GIS and related solutions.

ESRI has published several books, case studies and examples that can assist management. Nevertheless, our profession has been delinquent in documenting a number of focused and easily understood benefits of GIS within government and business.

If you have a story to share on the value you have received with your GIS implementation and are interested in sharing it, please submit it here.