Switching From an Older Site Selection Technology

• How difficult is it to switch?

  GIS WebTech makes switching easy! In fact, so many economic developers have switched to GIS WebTech in recent years that we’ve automated a large part of the process. We can have your Guru live and ready to go minutes after we sign a contract.

• Guru is much more advanced than my older technology and I have no GIS training. Is it difficult to use? How much training is provided?

  Guru is much easier to use than legacy apps because it is much newer and was built with the latest app design tools. Guru is so easy to use that we provide unlimited training for you, your team and even your local business community. Very few of our clients have any GIS training and none is needed. Guru makes things simple and easy!

• We invested a lot of time training local partners across our territory to use our current technology. I don’t want to have to go through that again.

  Guru is much easier to use than legacy apps because it is much newer and was built with the latest app design tools. Guru is so easy to use that we provide unlimited training for you, your team and your local partners. Many state and regional EDOs have made the switch to Guru and can testify to how easy it was to get local partners trained. We’d be happy to provide references to economic developers who were in your situation!

• Guru is a better technology. But if I switch I will not be on the same platform as my state EDO. And I get a low fee through my statewide program.

  Even if your state EDO is still using an older technology your community will benefit from switching to Guru. In fact, Guru’s Esri data, clean user interface, and advanced tools will help your community stand out from others still using older technologies with clunky user interfaces, confusing navigation, and demographic data from sources you (and site selectors) have never heard of. If you have a low fee through a state program, give us a call and we can explain how we have helped other communities in the same situation.

• We need a proposal management tool to work with our local economic development partners across our state/territory.

  Good news! Guru has a built-in proposal management module with the latest features, so you can collaborate with colleagues both inside and outside your organization. You can maintain a content library to house information used repeatedly on projects, invite colleagues to participate in a project, share project materials, set automated email reminders ahead of project deadlines, utilize project Q&A, and much more.

• Is Guru mobile responsive?

  Guru has the most advanced mobile version available. For example, only Guru includes full 3D functionality in mobile, allowing you to host virtual site visits on the go, showcase 3D virtual buildings while hosting a site visit, pull up a 3D property use case in an impromptu discussion, and more.

• We’ve used our current technology provider for years. But in the last few years they seem to have slowed or even stopped innovating. What assurance can we have that GIS WebTech will keep us on the leading edge?

  We love this question! From 3D virtual buildings to virtual site visits to analytics to workforce data, nearly every innovation in online site selection in recent years came from GIS WebTech. Guru is the only app with the latest innovation: full workflow support across all of your property-related activities, including analytics on your outbound campaigns and RFI/RFP responses. In fact, GIS WebTech is the only provider to come out with a new site selection technology in many years - and we’ve done it twice since 2017! How are we able to do so? Two reasons. First, Guru is the only technology built natively on the Esri platform, so we get access to Esri’s continuous innovations and add them regularly for the benefit of our clients, at no charge! Second, innovation is in our company’s DNA and we are relentless in our commitment to keeping our clients on the cutting edge.

• I have months left on my contract for an older technology and I cannot afford to pay twice. Do I have to wait for my existing contract to end?

  This is a very common situation. We have dealt with it many times in helping hundreds of customers switch from older technologies to Guru. Give us a call and we will explain how we can help.

• It was difficult to get my local data layers into my current technology and I do not want to have to track down a bunch of shapefiles again just to watch them get out of date.

  Good news! With Guru you do not need to ask your local GIS department to produce shapefiles, email them around, hope they work, and then watch them get out of date before doing it all over again. Because Guru is built on the same Esri platform that your local GIS departments use, adding local data layers is as easy as a few clicks. Not only that, Guru uses the Esri platform to point back to the source data, so you never have to worry about that data getting out of date. Guru always loads the latest data.