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FeedsHome: Winter 2009 › Cover Story › Untapped potential
Untapped potential
01/12/2009 | Channel: IT / Technology
Libbie Hammond speaks to Richard Waite, managing director of ESRI (UK) to find out about GIS – the underappreciated technology
Richard Waite’s career path to becoming MD of ESRI (UK) could be more accurately described as a winding tour. He began as a mechanical engineer, from which he moved into management consultancy, waste management and finally software (after a second detour back into consultancy). Richard’s perspective on this journey is quite philosophical: “Everything I have done to date has brought me here, to where I am today,” he began. “This job is the most satisfying of my entire career. My work in recycling gives me an invaluable environmental insight, and when I was a consultant I even worked with ESRI (UK), so these events all seem to have happened for a reason.”
I asked Richard to give more details: “I worked as a management consultant for 15 years, and in this role I gained experience of a large number of businesses. I started off on the manufacturing side, but then moved into waste management, and this happened to be at the time the Government was starting to take waste management and recycling seriously. I started working with many local authorities, and the Department of the Environment, and I became something of an expert in recycling. As I had gained all this experience, the Environment Select Committee asked me to be their specialist advisor when they held an enquiry into household waste recycling.”
Richard left consulting to set up his own recycling company, before returning once again to consultancy, for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he first had contact with ESRI (UK). “We worked very closely together for a year and I got to know them very well. I even said to my wife at the time: ‘If there is ever a company I would like to work for other than where I am, it would be ESRI (UK) as the product and the culture of the business are so wonderful’.”
Following this period at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Richard left and set up on his own as a consultant and the founder of ESRI (UK) approached him: “He asked if I would look at one of his sister companies, as they were having some difficulties,” Richard explained. “That led to me running that company, before I took over from him as MD of ESRI (UK). Ultimately, that is how I ended up here.”
Although ESRI (UK)’s name may suggest it is a division, in fact it is a privately-owned UK company, which is corporately separate from US-based ESRI Inc. Richard clarified: “ESRI Inc, which is the American company, is the global market leader in GIS software.
It develops ESRI ArcGIS software in California, and makes the products that are sold around the world. It also services the US market directly.”
He continued: “In order to service other countries around the world, ESRI Inc has a network of around 80 national distributors, of which ESRI (UK) is the largest. We are completely independent of ESRI Inc, but we have the rights to bring the software into the UK and build those products into the solutions that we provide to our customers across the public and private sector.”
In fact, Richard described ESRI (UK) as an ‘onion’: “At the centre of the business is the generic ESRI ArcGIS software. The next layer is bespoke code that we wrap around it to create a solution to meet a particular customer’s business need. The other layers consist of implementation services, the data that goes with the software, training, and technical support. We always aim to create a product that is very specific to a customer’s needs. If we don’t do that then I believe we have failed.”
Richard was very enthusiastic about his company’s solutions, but why would a company need a system that focuses on geography? Richard agreed that is a question he often hears, but in fact, geographic information is at the heart of every organisation. For example, it exists in almost every business system as customer addresses, property assets, operational areas, administrative boundaries, road and delivery or access routes. “Many businesses are run using geography or spatial data, and utilities are a really good example of organisations for which geography is a fundamental part of their business,” Richard explained. “Utilities have been using GIS for many years, principally to manage their asset base. These huge physical asset portfolios are geographically dispersed, and the only tool you can use to plan, manage and support that infrastructure is GIS.”
He continued: “Utilities’ customers are also dispersed and when you want to target your customers to improve business, you need to know where they are and what they need. Utilities are starting to recognise that they need to integrate GIS and CRM in order to do this, and are beginning to understand the need to make GIS an enterprise wide tool that supports and underpins their whole business – Wales and West Utilities is one example of a utility who has recently made this shift towards an enterprise solution.”
But isn’t GIS just digital maps? “That is one of the easiest ways of describing what GIS is, and although mapping is a very important part, it is only one aspect; the unseen spatial analysis that happens behind the map is far more powerful. Utilities are now seeing GIS as a way to unlock efficiency savings and performance improvements using this spatial analysis,” said Richard.
“For example, utilities’ assets need to be maintained on a cyclical basis, which is often done on the anniversary of when the asset was installed. This might sound logical, but it can result in a field crew going out to work on one asset, but ignore one 50 yards away that isn’t due to be looked at. If this preventative maintenance were approached on a geography-based cycle, the crew would be sent to maintain all the assets in one area, which can release huge efficiency savings. It saves crew time, travelling time, fuel costs, and environmental impact, but it does require a mindset shift. This can be a struggle, as some companies are quite set in their ways, particularly on the contracting side. They don’t like change, but the savings could be huge by making what is a simple, but fundamental flip.”
ESRI (UK) itself has also started thinking in different ways – Richard instigated an annual customer service survey and the initial results came as a bit of a shock, as he explained: “The first year we ran it customers told us that we were not quite as good as we thought, which was a bit of a blow! But we were brave enough to ask our customers what they really think, and we were prepared to act on whatever the answers were. We were told that our technical support wasn’t good enough, so we have trebled the number of technical assistance staff, put in a lot of new training and systems and we are now being told our technical support is excellent.”
His employees are an area of which Richard is evidently very proud: “We don’t talk about our ‘staff’, we talk about our ‘people’. Our customers tell us that they deal with many software companies, but our people are what make us stand out. I think that’s because they have a deep knowledge not only of their own products, but also of the industries we work in. We put an awful lot of energy and money into developing what we call ‘domain knowledge’, so that when one of our people goes into an electricity utility for example, they know how that industry works.”
He continued: “Our customers tell us that we don’t shirk our responsibilities; we stick with them to get a problem fixed. You can’t make someone have real dedication - they have it if they really care and believe in what they’re doing. A lot of my job is protecting that culture and making sure our people feel valued and continue to work in that way.”
As Richard mentioned, you can’t make people perform exceptionally, and in the same way you can’t make your clients work in partnership with you – but in the end, one often leads to the other. “We have to earn the respect of our customers, by delivering good work and standing by them if problems arise,” Richard acknowledged. “We pride ourselves on being very open and honest with our customers, and we hope they will treat us in the same way - to me that is the spirit of partnership.
“But it comes back to our people - our customers recognise that we care about their businesses’ success and that is what all our people understand. So we look very hard at how we can add value to our customers’ businesses and I think that is a lot of what partnership is about.”
A prime example of this is a new team Richard has created. “It’s a group of some of our best technical staff, who visit customers that are up and running and have no problems, on a ‘no charge’ basis, to spend a few days looking at what they are doing and suggesting improvements.
“This has really taken off. Inevitably we will identify something they need, such as staff training, and so it does create business for us, but it’s not our primary driver, the team are not salesmen. Most of our customers are using only a fraction of what GIS can deliver to them, so this is a kind of fine-tuning that identifies functionality that can help improve their business.”
Although the technical side of the utilities market has long recognised the benefits of GIS, Richard noted that now is the time for the board to take notice: “The biggest problem for us today is to make senior staff aware of the power of GIS,” he said. “We have got to take that message to the finance director, the IT director and ultimately to the CEO, because if GIS is to fulfil its real potential, it needs to be applied across a business. Our customers are saying: ‘Can you help me sell the benefits of GIS internally as I can’t get my boss or my boss’s boss to really understand what it could do for us’.
“We have got to bring GIS out of the technical arena and into the mainstream. It is a huge responsibility, but I feel it is up to ESRI (UK) and other GIS vendors to convince our current and future customers of the benefits of GIS.”
Getting this message to the right people has never been more important as utilities are feeling the ever-increasing pressure from regulatory bodies to be more efficient. “When it comes to taking costs out of the business and improving the levels of customer service, the two technologies utilities are considering are GIS and ERP. They are starting to look at what is called ‘holistic asset management’, which brings all their data together, in order to produce new insights and better decisions - GIS is the system that brings them together,” Richard commented. One example of an organisation that has recognised the value of GIS as a stategic business system is Veolia Water UK, which rcently replaced its legacy applications with a single, integrated GIS solution. For the first time in its 150-year history, it is now able to make up-to-the-minute information visible to the entire business immediately.
Richard also highlighted the environmental and humanitarian uses to which ESRI (UK) puts the technology. “ESRI Inc is very focused on how GIS can help us as humans to improve and manage our world,” he said. “One of our big focuses is a charity called MapAction, which uses GIS to respond to major environmental disasters that literally change the landscape, and which has been recognised by the United Nations as one of their core resources. For example, the 2004 tsunami destroyed an immense amount of infrastructure, and changed the physical appearance of whole areas. This meant when the aid agencies arrived they were facing a landscape that didn’t match the maps they had brought with them.
“MapAction flies in volunteers who are equipped with portable technology running GIS software and they remap that landscape very quickly and produce physical maps, which are then given to the aid agencies. In the UK, MapAction often uses our training facilities, and we also have a number of volunteers among our staff who are flown out at short notice to disaster zones. This is one way we give something back, we’re very proud of it and we think they do a fantastic job.”
Richard concluded: “I feel very fortunate to be leading an organisation that can really make a difference to not only our customers, but also to the world around us. It has taken a long time but GIS is now reaching a mature position where it can take its place alongside other technologies like ERP to become a key enterprise technology. I am really excited about the next decade, as I think that there is huge potential in GIS that hasn’t been unlocked.”
I asked Richard to give more details: “I worked as a management consultant for 15 years, and in this role I gained experience of a large number of businesses. I started off on the manufacturing side, but then moved into waste management, and this happened to be at the time the Government was starting to take waste management and recycling seriously. I started working with many local authorities, and the Department of the Environment, and I became something of an expert in recycling. As I had gained all this experience, the Environment Select Committee asked me to be their specialist advisor when they held an enquiry into household waste recycling.”
Richard left consulting to set up his own recycling company, before returning once again to consultancy, for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he first had contact with ESRI (UK). “We worked very closely together for a year and I got to know them very well. I even said to my wife at the time: ‘If there is ever a company I would like to work for other than where I am, it would be ESRI (UK) as the product and the culture of the business are so wonderful’.”
Following this period at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Richard left and set up on his own as a consultant and the founder of ESRI (UK) approached him: “He asked if I would look at one of his sister companies, as they were having some difficulties,” Richard explained. “That led to me running that company, before I took over from him as MD of ESRI (UK). Ultimately, that is how I ended up here.”
Although ESRI (UK)’s name may suggest it is a division, in fact it is a privately-owned UK company, which is corporately separate from US-based ESRI Inc. Richard clarified: “ESRI Inc, which is the American company, is the global market leader in GIS software.
It develops ESRI ArcGIS software in California, and makes the products that are sold around the world. It also services the US market directly.”
He continued: “In order to service other countries around the world, ESRI Inc has a network of around 80 national distributors, of which ESRI (UK) is the largest. We are completely independent of ESRI Inc, but we have the rights to bring the software into the UK and build those products into the solutions that we provide to our customers across the public and private sector.”
In fact, Richard described ESRI (UK) as an ‘onion’: “At the centre of the business is the generic ESRI ArcGIS software. The next layer is bespoke code that we wrap around it to create a solution to meet a particular customer’s business need. The other layers consist of implementation services, the data that goes with the software, training, and technical support. We always aim to create a product that is very specific to a customer’s needs. If we don’t do that then I believe we have failed.”
Richard was very enthusiastic about his company’s solutions, but why would a company need a system that focuses on geography? Richard agreed that is a question he often hears, but in fact, geographic information is at the heart of every organisation. For example, it exists in almost every business system as customer addresses, property assets, operational areas, administrative boundaries, road and delivery or access routes. “Many businesses are run using geography or spatial data, and utilities are a really good example of organisations for which geography is a fundamental part of their business,” Richard explained. “Utilities have been using GIS for many years, principally to manage their asset base. These huge physical asset portfolios are geographically dispersed, and the only tool you can use to plan, manage and support that infrastructure is GIS.”
He continued: “Utilities’ customers are also dispersed and when you want to target your customers to improve business, you need to know where they are and what they need. Utilities are starting to recognise that they need to integrate GIS and CRM in order to do this, and are beginning to understand the need to make GIS an enterprise wide tool that supports and underpins their whole business – Wales and West Utilities is one example of a utility who has recently made this shift towards an enterprise solution.”
But isn’t GIS just digital maps? “That is one of the easiest ways of describing what GIS is, and although mapping is a very important part, it is only one aspect; the unseen spatial analysis that happens behind the map is far more powerful. Utilities are now seeing GIS as a way to unlock efficiency savings and performance improvements using this spatial analysis,” said Richard.
“For example, utilities’ assets need to be maintained on a cyclical basis, which is often done on the anniversary of when the asset was installed. This might sound logical, but it can result in a field crew going out to work on one asset, but ignore one 50 yards away that isn’t due to be looked at. If this preventative maintenance were approached on a geography-based cycle, the crew would be sent to maintain all the assets in one area, which can release huge efficiency savings. It saves crew time, travelling time, fuel costs, and environmental impact, but it does require a mindset shift. This can be a struggle, as some companies are quite set in their ways, particularly on the contracting side. They don’t like change, but the savings could be huge by making what is a simple, but fundamental flip.”
ESRI (UK) itself has also started thinking in different ways – Richard instigated an annual customer service survey and the initial results came as a bit of a shock, as he explained: “The first year we ran it customers told us that we were not quite as good as we thought, which was a bit of a blow! But we were brave enough to ask our customers what they really think, and we were prepared to act on whatever the answers were. We were told that our technical support wasn’t good enough, so we have trebled the number of technical assistance staff, put in a lot of new training and systems and we are now being told our technical support is excellent.”
His employees are an area of which Richard is evidently very proud: “We don’t talk about our ‘staff’, we talk about our ‘people’. Our customers tell us that they deal with many software companies, but our people are what make us stand out. I think that’s because they have a deep knowledge not only of their own products, but also of the industries we work in. We put an awful lot of energy and money into developing what we call ‘domain knowledge’, so that when one of our people goes into an electricity utility for example, they know how that industry works.”
He continued: “Our customers tell us that we don’t shirk our responsibilities; we stick with them to get a problem fixed. You can’t make someone have real dedication - they have it if they really care and believe in what they’re doing. A lot of my job is protecting that culture and making sure our people feel valued and continue to work in that way.”
As Richard mentioned, you can’t make people perform exceptionally, and in the same way you can’t make your clients work in partnership with you – but in the end, one often leads to the other. “We have to earn the respect of our customers, by delivering good work and standing by them if problems arise,” Richard acknowledged. “We pride ourselves on being very open and honest with our customers, and we hope they will treat us in the same way - to me that is the spirit of partnership.
“But it comes back to our people - our customers recognise that we care about their businesses’ success and that is what all our people understand. So we look very hard at how we can add value to our customers’ businesses and I think that is a lot of what partnership is about.”
A prime example of this is a new team Richard has created. “It’s a group of some of our best technical staff, who visit customers that are up and running and have no problems, on a ‘no charge’ basis, to spend a few days looking at what they are doing and suggesting improvements.
“This has really taken off. Inevitably we will identify something they need, such as staff training, and so it does create business for us, but it’s not our primary driver, the team are not salesmen. Most of our customers are using only a fraction of what GIS can deliver to them, so this is a kind of fine-tuning that identifies functionality that can help improve their business.”
Although the technical side of the utilities market has long recognised the benefits of GIS, Richard noted that now is the time for the board to take notice: “The biggest problem for us today is to make senior staff aware of the power of GIS,” he said. “We have got to take that message to the finance director, the IT director and ultimately to the CEO, because if GIS is to fulfil its real potential, it needs to be applied across a business. Our customers are saying: ‘Can you help me sell the benefits of GIS internally as I can’t get my boss or my boss’s boss to really understand what it could do for us’.
“We have got to bring GIS out of the technical arena and into the mainstream. It is a huge responsibility, but I feel it is up to ESRI (UK) and other GIS vendors to convince our current and future customers of the benefits of GIS.”
Getting this message to the right people has never been more important as utilities are feeling the ever-increasing pressure from regulatory bodies to be more efficient. “When it comes to taking costs out of the business and improving the levels of customer service, the two technologies utilities are considering are GIS and ERP. They are starting to look at what is called ‘holistic asset management’, which brings all their data together, in order to produce new insights and better decisions - GIS is the system that brings them together,” Richard commented. One example of an organisation that has recognised the value of GIS as a stategic business system is Veolia Water UK, which rcently replaced its legacy applications with a single, integrated GIS solution. For the first time in its 150-year history, it is now able to make up-to-the-minute information visible to the entire business immediately.
Richard also highlighted the environmental and humanitarian uses to which ESRI (UK) puts the technology. “ESRI Inc is very focused on how GIS can help us as humans to improve and manage our world,” he said. “One of our big focuses is a charity called MapAction, which uses GIS to respond to major environmental disasters that literally change the landscape, and which has been recognised by the United Nations as one of their core resources. For example, the 2004 tsunami destroyed an immense amount of infrastructure, and changed the physical appearance of whole areas. This meant when the aid agencies arrived they were facing a landscape that didn’t match the maps they had brought with them.
“MapAction flies in volunteers who are equipped with portable technology running GIS software and they remap that landscape very quickly and produce physical maps, which are then given to the aid agencies. In the UK, MapAction often uses our training facilities, and we also have a number of volunteers among our staff who are flown out at short notice to disaster zones. This is one way we give something back, we’re very proud of it and we think they do a fantastic job.”
Richard concluded: “I feel very fortunate to be leading an organisation that can really make a difference to not only our customers, but also to the world around us. It has taken a long time but GIS is now reaching a mature position where it can take its place alongside other technologies like ERP to become a key enterprise technology. I am really excited about the next decade, as I think that there is huge potential in GIS that hasn’t been unlocked.”
