Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.
$100
per year
Salesforce Maps
Score 9.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Salesforce Maps (formerly MapAnything) helps users map their CRM data. Users can: View customer, prospect, employee, partner, & competitor locations Build routes, call lists, campaigns, & event invite lists directly from the map Map wins & losses and visualize team activities & performance Maps is Salesforce-integrated & was built on Force.com. According to the vendor, the software has 1400+ customers so far. Use cases include: Field…
These alternatives to ArcGIS have one thing in common - they are all generally more user-friendly, and they all lack the capability of ArcGIS. ArcGIS can do most anything geographically-related, while these other products do one or two things very well. For instance, ArcGIS's …
We utilize ArcGIS for each of our units. For example, we just completed our unit on the Middle Ages and are starting our unit on the Renaissance. There is a GeoInquiry that has students manipulate a map to not only see but understand the spread of the plague. They can toggle on and off different layers and icons to see how deadly the plague truly was, and how it led to the rebirth of Europe
If you are a small business or have a small team in the field, anything Salesforce and its components should be avoided. Its price-point and ROI are overstated.
Simply because the program deserves it. It seems to me that it is a fundamental tool for the storage, analysis, and interpretation of medium and large-scale phenomena, unmanageable with traditional engineering software. Its versatility in the handling of the different "layers" with which the data is handled and interpolation tools, make this software a powerful ally both for companies and for the educational part of the universities.
Once set up, the tools are extremely easy to use. I had a staff member develop a tool for field data collection, that included an external and internal dashboards to monitor progress in days. The field workers that collected the data, barely knew how to use a computer, and within minutes they could use the application that was configured for them.
Worked well once you figured it out. The 'help portal' was no 'help'. Once you get done self-teaching yourself enough of the terminology and workings, it is pretty quick and easy to use. But the learning curve, again, is not worth the time or effort
Unlike other platforms (ex: EMSI), there is no "help desk" new users can easily call into for troubleshooting or errors, and so you have to spend LOTS of time trying workarounds. This is also because the help center blog posts are usually pretty confusing, and many times do not include images or videos to help you along. Any such changes would be immensely useful!
ArcGIS and QGIS have a lot of similarities between their products. Where ArcGIS stands out is with their online version of their software. ArcGIS's online solution will pair up with your on-prem solution to offer a fully synchronized system. I wasn't able to duplicate the efforts with QGIS's products and it also requires other 3rd party applications to offer something "somewhat" comparable.
ArcGIS is almost assuredly a positive ROI. The software is nicely packaged with a large user base. If you plan on doing geographic analysis and think there could be a boost to your bottom-line by doing geographic analysis, ArcGIS is the first tool I would turn to.
For some analysts that just want to geocode addresses and plot city, county, or country boundaries, ArcGIS is a negative ROI. There are lots of other tools (free ones) that will accomplish these tasks without investing lots of time and money in ArcGIS. If that's all you're looking for, ArcGIS will turn out to be a negative ROI.
ArcGIS has been a positive ROI for cases involving customer analytics. The software is great for geofencing customers and finding the most optimal targeting of customers.
