Collaboration is a powerful tool! It is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. In the Commercial Special Interest Group, we were discussing the need to create vertically oriented tools in Business Analyst to solve specific business problems for different industries. One solution was to rely and expect ESRI to accomplish this task. However, a group of us envisioned a more powerful way to build this capability into BA.
We saw a way the business educators, ESRI business partners, end users, and ESRI developers could all work together to provide these solutions. A specific example would be:
Business problem to be solved
How many sites can a specific market (e.g. Denver) hold, and where should they be located?
The business process that addresses this problem is fairly universal and can be identified and documented by GIS/Business educators. The specific tasks can be created and modeled using Model Builder and Python by users, business partners, and ESRI developers. The model would use parameters and variables to provide the flexibility needed to address different industries and companies. The solution could be posted on the resource site so that educators can make the process and model into an educational tool. Users, business partners, and developers could continuously improve the model. This collaborative approach would provide a timely solution that is flexible, universal, and FREE.
