Maps Matter: a Case for Private Maps
As some maps used to say near the edges of the then known world: Hic sunt dracones - here be dragons. In today’s fast-paced world, maps are indispensable tools. Maps are everywhere — guiding us to restaurants, aiding logistics, and enhancing situational awareness.
Public maps cover the public space. Streets, roads, cities, etc. With efforts like openstreetmap, even individual trees and park benches get mapped. Germany, where FORMATION is based, takes mapping their public space very seriously and German contributors have historically dominated contributions to openstreetmap.
While public mapping services have transformed outdoor navigation, they stop at our doorstep. That’s fine when that’s your home. And that’s true for most of the world’s hundreds of millions of buildings — including many massive ones. And what about campuses, private terrain, or temporary sites? They are all represented as bland, empty shapes on a map. This is where FORMATION steps in, offering tailored mapping solutions for buildings, events, and industrial environments.
The Need for Private Mapping Solutions
Maps are more than just directional tools; they enhance user experience, improve operational efficiency, and provide critical situational awareness. In complex environments like large office buildings, factories, event venues (outdoor or indoor), campuses, intuitive maps can significantly reduce confusion, reduce time looking for things or each other, help occupants and visitors find their way, and provide situational awareness.
The challenge is that public maps don’t extend to where it matters most: where you live, work, or operate. They are great for getting you to do those places but they stop at the front door. We’re back to Here be dragons.
The lack of private maps is partially due to privacy and security concerns. Giving burglars a detailed map to where everything is in your building is not ideal. And of course there usually are some maps such as architecture drawings, fire escape plans, and sometimes even friendly visitor maps intended for signage. But these maps lack the usability, features, and convenience users expect from outdoor maps. And more importantly they don’t really do as good of a job with delivering value like outdoor maps do for us.
To address this, FORMATION offers a map that you can make your own. You control what’s on the map. The world is your map. You populate it with your buildings, sites, work areas, zones, and other areas of interest. And then you add detail: points of interest, tracked/moving assets, and whatever else is important to you. And then you share it with your colleagues, visitors, contractors, employees, and whomever you want to give access to the map. You can make the experience as inclusive or exclusive as you want. For visitors, anonymous access via QR Code is possible and an easy way to help them feel welcome. But you can limit this to specific areas in your building. The map your security staff sees is not the same map that visitors see.
Benefits of Taking Maps Private
Enhanced Security and Privacy: Private maps ensure that sensitive information about a facility’s layout and assets remains confidential, accessible only to authorized personnel.
Customized Navigation: Tailored mapping solutions can address the unique needs of a facility, offering features like indoor navigation, room booking, and fault reporting.
Operational Efficiency: With real-time data and notifications, property managers can streamline operations, quickly address building issues, and improve tenant services. The ability to track assets effortlessly using hybrid tracking, enhances efficiency, enables process optimizations, and provides great situational awareness to employees.
Improved Visitor Experience: Visitors can access maps via simple QR code scans without the need for app installations, making navigation within private premises straightforward and user-friendly.
Who is it for?
FORMATION provides maps for buildings, events, and industry. Like email, maps are for everyone. FORMATION gives you something you probably don’t have: a private map that works just like a public one—but tailored for you, your employees, and everyone who matters to your organization.
In other words, maps are for businesses across all sectors and locations.
- Are you losing time because people can’t find what they need or where to go?
- Are you struggling to track equipment, goods, or other assets?
- Are your premises confusing or difficult to navigate?
Maps can help.
How to get a FORMATION Map
Getting started with FORMATION is easy and is going to get even easier later in the year when we will provide the tools that we use ourselves to create your map as part of our SAAS onboarding workflow.
The process is very simple:
- Set up a private FORMATION workspace. For now contact us to get one and we’ll get you started. But very soon this will be part of our self service experience.
- Provide some floor plans or site maps as an image. The image needs to be to scale. We’ll georeference it onto the map. Our self service experience will include a user friendly building editor that will allow you to do this yourself.
- Start mapping! Use the FORMATION tools to mark points of interest, draw navigation paths, add zones, and import content. We can help you do all this. But we just use the same tools that we provide to our users.
Get in touch to add advanced tracking, our insights dashboard, or explore how a FORMATION Map can address your needs.