The GIS for business applications has emerged as one of the fastest growing in the industry. The liberalization, and increase in consumerism, has given a new thrust to the growth of GIS in India.

For service-oriented industries and business establishment, GIS offers a platform for actually implementing more-cost-effective systems for location of warehouses, retail outlets, scheduling and routing of repair/maintenance aspects. Now digitized map of large cities are available which can be used by various companies. The problem which all the GIS providers face is outdated data. Companies also need to look at alternative data source that could be used to develop applications of GIS.

I hope that the "National Workshop on Corporate GIS" will offer an opportunity for interaction of GIS community with business sector to find out the ways to promote the GIS applications in corporate sector.