Enterprise GIS

Enterprise GIS is a management method within an organization that is facilitated by the GIS technology tools. When an organization looks to leverage a resource that will impact across business areas or takes on a resource that is considered critical to normal business operations as a whole, that resource typically becomes categorized as enterprise. With an enterprise GIS, the following characteristics are realized:

• The leveraging of integrated business systems, data, and technology resources
• The existence of tools and applications providing the business varying levels of accessibility and functionality tailored to their specific business functions and work processes
• Centralized, standardized, and controlled operation management, including business strategic and information technology (IT) planning processes.

With the advancement in GIS technology and the growing ease of use, more organizations are recognizing the importance of managing their enterprise information spatially. Organizations throughout the world are leveraging their IT investments by integrating mapping and GIS technology with other enterprise operations, for example, work order management and customer information systems. GIS technology and geospatial data are now seen as strategic business resources providing powerful information products used to empower executive management geospatial decisions and support critical enterprise business operations.

Enterprise GIS provides a way to integrate business information systems and optimize business workflows throughout the organization. An enterprise GIS is realized in the following situations:

• The workflows involving spatially referenced information that the organization implements are understood at the appropriate level of detail by each of the organization's stakeholders, and each stakeholder's role and the part he or she plays to reach the organizational goals is understood.
• There is a common information infrastructure across the business units supported centrally.
• Spatially referenced data are required, and data utilized by the business/organization as a whole are stored and managed in a central repository. Appropriate security levels are applied to the data such that those business units that “own” the data can make changes and those business units that “access” the data can do so in a manner that minimizes redundancy and complexity.
• Specialized applications and software tools are used in a business unit only when the tools chosen for the organization as a whole cannot substantially meet the requirements of the business.
• Standards, policies, and procedures are realized and implemented across the organization as a whole but executed at the department and user level.

Enterprise does not mean “big,” though in many cases such systems are. It is a method adopted to realize the organization's goals.