I can get enough of all that sporty-sounding business jargon. “Sweat your asset.” “We’re in the same ballpark.” “Let’s get on the fast track.” At the end of a meeting I feel like I’ve had a workout.

Yet here I am thinking about companies using geographic information science (GIS) and I can’t avoid those clichés. Our industry is certainly becoming more mature – maybe even mainstream – but talking to clients across every sector, it’s clear that many organisations could do much more with their data using GIS. Many could still take it to the max, as it were. Their data is just not feeling the burn.

So I’m going to take on the role of personal trainer (not an everyday experience) and explore why this is so, what most public, private and third sector enterprises are doing with GIS now, and how much more they can achieve.

It’s not generally a want of investment. Considerable sums are spent on people, data, hardware and software that make up an in-house GIS function. Companies who make this investment often do so because they need to perform fairly rigidly defined tasks, based around routine data-management tasks. This makes perfect sense, but in these circumstances it’s easy to ignore the full potential in both the data and technology.

So, like a personal trainer, the point of a specialist adviser like Geofutures is that we are able to keep our eyes on the prize. It’s no disrespect to an in-house GIS officer who is head down keeping the wheels turning if we come along and offer new ways to push the software, hardware and data of GIS to deliver much more than is conventionally possible.

And often it’s the data, rather than the technology itself, which holds the key to unlock hidden value, identify new revenue streams and streamline processes.

Is your business in this position? Here’s a little test. The paragraphs which follow describe the most common GIS functions within an organisation. Is yours doing any or all of them?

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