Careful planning is key to successfully implementing GIS in the enterprise. Implementing GIS presents a unique set of challenges. Even the most well-funded projects can fail because of poor planning.

A geographic information system (GIS) captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that refers to or is linked to location.

In the strictest sense, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares, and displays geographic information. In a more generic sense, GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data, maps, and present the results of all these operations. Geographic information science is the science underlying the geographic concepts, applications and systems, taught in degree and GIS Certificate programs at many universities.