Orchestrating specialist expertise to develop spatially aware CRM systems

21 Oct 2011

Creating a spatially aware system to solve a client's business problem often means orchestrating three different sets of specialist expertise. The client, who knows his or her business; a specialist in spatial thinking and Geographic Information System (GIS) knowledge to integrate information and a third party, who knows the intricacies of the system design for a particular sector.

As GIS suppliers, we often find ourselves partnering with other service providers who are already experts in a particular domain: banking systems, urban planning, property management, or transport engineering, for example. Many of our projects have started with an approach from an IT service provider that is an expert in its domain and needs access to GIS expertise to give a client's application a spatial dimension.

Properly done, service partnerships can create powerful solutions to customer problems. Integrating diverse information in a spatial system, so that users can easily visualise data on a map, can lead to new insights about the business. At the very least, it makes information a lot easier to understand and communicate.

Not all service partnerships work and they are most likely to fail when the client pushes them, against the wishes of one of the parties. The technical aspects of adding a GIS component to an application that is already under development can be relatively simple; the political aspects are less easy to achieve.

From our experience, these are the eight most important ingredients of a successful partnership between expert suppliers:

Seek out partners who have similar values and corporate cultures. If solving the client's problems is what turns you on, a partnership with someone who is chasing a revenue target is unlikely to work.
Create the partnership early on and take a joint approach to the client.
Respect each other's expertise.
Be prepared to learn about each other's systems and areas of expertise - at least enough to make the partnership work.
Aim for a long-term relationship; 'partners' who see themselves as future competitors do not make for a good experience.
Treat the first project as a pilot: Limit the risk to both parties and test the working relationship.
Be flexible about costs and billings - much of this has to be worked out in practice.
The relationship is the key ingredient of project success: manage it accordingly.

When all these conditions are met, the fruits of the collaboration can be remarkable.