6 Sure Signs Your GIS App is Outdated

Esri’s Sole Partner in Economic Development

The mission of the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority (NRGRDA) is to initiate, facilitate and support the community and economic development efforts within the New River Gorge region of West Virginia. The team was searching for an online sites and buildings solution that would integrate seamlessly with the Esri platform used by their local planning and utility partners. Jina Belcher, Deputy Director at NRGRDA explains why Recruit was the logical choice for her team. “Recruit is the only online sites and building technology built on the Esri platform. With Recruit our data easily synchronizes with our local stakeholders. All of our regional planning and development councils utilize Esri, all our municipal water and sewer providers are mapping with Esri, all of our assessor’s offices are mapping with Esri, so for us it made sense to switch to Recruit because it integrates seamlessly with all the existing resources already in the state of West Virginia. If a waterline changes because of an update at the water department, the Recruit layer displaying that waterline syncs to the layer in the county’s ArcGIS and updates Recruit immediately. This only happens because Recruit is built on the Esri platform, the same platform all our utilities use for mapping. It just makes sense that we are all utilizing the same platform.”

In addition to ease of adding and updating local infrastructure layers, Jina appreciates the reliability of the Esri demographic data included in Recruit. “With Recruit we are confident that we have access to the most up-to-date information. Esri data is pulled in real-time and never has to be manually updated. When Esri’s data updates, Recruit’s data updates automatically. It is a big advantage for us that GIS WebTech is Esri’s only partner in economic development.”

NRGRDA has undertaken two large initiatives recently focusing on their outdoor economy and opportunity zones. Jina describes the benefits her team gets from having robust data so easily accessible in one place. “It is so much more efficient for us to be able to utilize our own internal resources already available within Recruit to access information and reports. Having ready access to opportunity zone mapping combined with our available properties is hugely valuable. “

Recruit provides a look and feel consistent with the client’s website including links back to the EDO’s main landing page. This feature appeals to Jina. “We appreciate that Recruit integrates so seamlessly with the rest of our website. It is branded so fluidly that folks don’t realize they are in the cloud when they navigate to the site selection page through our website. We value our relationship with our large utility providers and they recently commented on how easy it is to navigate our sites and buildings tools. We get great user feedback and that means a lot to us.”

Jina assures those with concerns about the potential down-time in switching online site selection providers, “The hardest part of the migration process was getting our property data from our previous provider – everything else was easy. It basically happened overnight.”