By Lee Feliciano

This paper is a distillation of the thoughts of industry practitioners concerning the current status of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in Canada.  It is intended to provide the business manager with a better understanding of the potential benefits that may be gained from using GIS.  It is written for a non-technical audience, although given the subject matter some jargon is unavoidable.

Since the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of GIS as a business tool, it will illustrate how this technology can benefit an organization and contribute toward achieving its business objectives in a cost-effective manner.  Given that a fundamental assumption of this paper is that information is regarded by a firm as key resource, the greater the importance placed on information by an organization, the greater the potential for GIS to add value to the business.