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GIS support consultant: Jan

This Case Study belongs to Geographical information systems officer.

Jan works as a support consultant for GeoWise in Edinburgh, a software development company with a strong emphasis on GIS. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2007 with an MSc in Geographical Information Science.

I graduated in 2004 with a degree from the University of Aberdeen in geography without a clear idea of what I wanted to do career wise.

After a gap year spent working in Australia, I decided to return to Scotland to complete a Masters degree in geographical information science (GIS). The idea was to combine my casual interests in computing with my love of maps and cartography. The GIS course at Edinburgh University was hard work, but I learned a lot and I felt it was much more relevant to the world of employment than my undergraduate degree had been.

During the final few months of the Masters course, staff circulated a number of job opportunities from their industry contacts - one of which was a junior support consultant at GeoWise.

GeoWise is a software company that develops internet-based statistical visualisation dashboards. The products allow users with limited or no GIS experience to create these Flash-based dashboards that combine maps with statistics. The role of a support consultant is multi-faceted. Our primary role and responsibility is to provide first line support to our customers. This is mainly technical support but also involves delivering training sessions and consultancy. In conjunction with the sales team, we provide pre-sales advice and deliver product demonstrations to potential customers. We also work with the development team to feedback product improvements and perform software testing. All of these tasks require a strong grounding in GIS and ICT, as well as an understanding of client requirements, which builds up with experience.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the job is the diversity of the tasks we undertake. Having such a wide range of roles, I very rarely do the same thing every day. Some days require peace and quiet while I am testing a product, while other days I spend most of my time on the telephone providing support to clients. Product demonstrations are often done remotely with conferencing tools but we are also on-site fairly frequently providing training or consultancy sessions. The occasional travel and building up a personal rapport with a group of clients is very rewarding.

The downside of this career is definitely the feeling that you are computer-bound most of the time. In my role, however, I am definitely out of my seat quite a lot liaising with colleagues. The days out of the office are a nice break but are often quite long and a little tiring.

Case Study sourced by Andrea Gregory of AGCAS, 18 December 2009.