Esri gets listed by Forbes as company making a ‘Positive Difference’ in 2020 an ‘Extraordinary Year’

Esri Founder and President Jack Dangermond – photo by Spencer Lowell Inc. Magazine

GIS Solutions (GISS) a 100% Sri Lankan company, and a group company of Just In Time Group – is the most successful GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software operation in Sri Lanka, who is

proud to announce that its principal and developer of the ArcGIS Platform Esri’s (acronym for ‘Environmental Systems Research Institute’ – US) has been recognised and honoured by Forbes Magazine as a company that is making a ‘Positive Difference’ in 2020 an ‘Extraordinary Year’.

“As a 100% Sri Lankan company GIS Solutions, as the sole authorised distributor in Sri Lanka for Esri, believes in making a positive difference by developing applications and implementing solid and sustainable GIS technology-based solutions. These solutions have been helping both public and private sector organisations in Sri Lanka, to make better informed decisions, protect natural resources, optimise investments and resources through better collaboration and save time and money. Contribution and making a difference for the better is at the very heart of what GIS does. GISS is proud of the work and the positive difference that our principal Esri makes, and these are core shared values that both our organisations share in this partnership and contributing for a sustainable future,” explained GIS Solutions CEO Ashani Jayasinghe.”

Esri President and Co-Founder Jack Dangermond said it was founded to help solve some of the world’s most difficult problems. We do so by supporting our users’ important work with a commitment to science, sustainability, community, education, research, and positive change.

Honouring the Companies Making a Positive Difference in an Extraordinary Year (Inc.) – Esri has been awarded Gold, the highest level, in the Government Services industry as part of the Forbes publication’s first annual Best in Business list—a new recognition program that celebrates companies making the biggest impact on their communities, their industries, the environment, or society.1

Best in Business 2020 list is for, The Change Makers, the Legacy Builders, and the Heroes of 2020, where Inc.’s inaugural Best in Business awards celebrated the companies that are making an extraordinary impact in a tumultuous year – including Inc.’s prestigious Company of the Year.2

“How We Hit $912 Million in Sales,” Jack Dangermond, co-founder of mapping software maker Esri, talks about how his company maintains steady, stellar growth – shared by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, Senior Writer, Inc.@Lagorio3

This is the story of Entrepreneur Jack Dangermond, as told to Inc. Executive Editor Christine Lagorio:

“My parents were immigrants who started a nursery as a way to get us kids through school. I learned around the dinner table about customer service and cash flow and paying bills. There’s no substitute for growing up around people who actually like doing business.

I went on to Harvard and got very interested in computers and studying the earth’s landscape. After school, my wife and I moved back home to Redlands, California, and started working in our own very modest way. Redlands is not a high-tech capital like Silicon Valley. But it allowed us to live cheaply in a $400-a-month apartment. We had $ 1,100 total when we incorporated Esri.

Today, about 350,000 organisations use our tools. We have 9,000 employees worldwide and $ 912 million in revenue. In our 43 years, we have never missed a quarter. We’ve never had any layoffs; we’ve never had any downsizing. It’s just been very conservative, systematic growth.

One thing that has made us so successful is that we’ve never taken outside investment. That means we can concentrate on what our customers want – not what the stockholders or the VCs want. That’s a strategic advantage. Customers notice that we are actually here to support them. And their needs help us innovate. We spend about a quarter of our annual revenue on innovation – about twice what a normal public company spends.

I don’t understand why young entrepreneurs feel this pressure to take venture capital or go public. Don’t get me wrong: Public companies are A-OK with me. I just think there is another way. Staying private is a lot saner.

Sure, I have the demands of my customers. But I don’t have that investment world breathing down my back constantly. In Redlands, we’re out of the Silicon Valley fray, where you can get a better job if you move across the street and venture capitalists are always searching you out.

Being in this so-called backwater, we are not well-known, so we don’t have investors wanting to get rich out of the good work we are doing. By not, as they say, ‘monetising’ the company, we can concentrate on the work that needs to get done.”

References

1https://www.inc.com/magazine/202102/inc-staff/impact-purpose-company-of-the-year-best-in-business-2020.html

2https://www.inc.com/best-in-business

3https://www.inc.com/magazine/201307/christine-lagorio/jack-dangermond-how-he-started-esri.html