Business Benefits Beyond GIS

Introduction
AM/FM/GIS implementations that integrate complex applications with business processes, such as outage and network management, utility business geographies, or operational support systems, are applications of mainstream information technology. They produce great business benefits Beyond GIS. Intellectual capital (IC) accounting provides objective measures for valuing these benefits, many of which have been difficult to quantify with traditional accounting techniques and methodologies.

IC is a rather new concept. Some call it “revolutionary.” IC was first documented in an article by Fortune editor Thomas A. Stewart, and was published in that magazine in early 1991. In 1997, two books entitled Intellectual Capital were published, one of which was authored by Stewart (1997). Leif Edvinsson, the Corporate Director of Intellectual Capital at Skandia ABS, and Michael S. Malone, a prominent business and high technology writer, co-authored the other book (1997). Both are excellent sources, and should be read for additional information on this topic.

This paper follows two others written by this author for recent conferences (Ferguson, 1996; Ferguson, 1997).

Intellectual Capital Described
Intellectual capital is an economic product of the information age where knowledge and communication are the fundamental sources of wealth. It is a 1990s response to the increased value of intellectual assets within companies, corporations, and organizations throughout the world. Intellectual capital is intellectual material—knowledge, information, intellectual property, and experience—that can be used to create wealth. Another description of IC is the difference between a company’s balance sheet net worth and its market capitalization (the number of shares outstanding times the share price). While only a few corporate balance sheets presently record IC, knowledgeable market analysts treat non-financial performance data as leading indicators of future financial performance.