Abstract
Entrepreneurial Business GIS Education with a Business Analyst Learning Center
Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education
Author(s): Fred Miller
Integrated Business GIS systems, such as Esri's Business Analyst suite of products, offers significantly enhanced opportunities for organizations to integrate GIS approaches into business problem solving and planning. These opportunities apply to university business education as well and afford business schools the opportunity to integrate GIS topics and applications into courses in information technology, strategic planning, operations management, finance, marketing and real estate. However, these products are not included in typical state- or university-level site licenses. In addition, annual data updates and continuous system enhancements produce annual maintenance costs beyond those of initial acquisition. Thus, business schools wishing to exploit these tools encounter cost constraints as well. This paper describes an approach for overcoming these constraints. Specifically, it describes the process of building and maintaining a self-sustaining Integrated Business GIS lab using the Business Analyst product suite. It details an effective software configuration, estimates its cost and potential revenue streams.
Fred Miller
Murray State University
Dept of MGT, MKT and Bus Admin
Murray , Kentucky 42071
United States
Phone: 2708096206
Fax: 2708093740
E-mail: Fred.Miller@MurrayState.edu