Spotlight: Transforming Business System Data into Spatial Intelligence

State and local governments are increasingly turning to workflow-driven platforms like Salesforce to manage core operations such as 311 service requests, permitting, inspections, and citizen engagement.  While these systems improve internal efficiency, the data they generate is often locked within silos, making it difficult to visualize, share, or use the information operationally across the organization.

In the Town of Cary, G&H International partnered with the Innovation Lab and the Neighborhood Services Committee (NSC) to address this challenge head-on. Since 2017, we’ve helped the Town develop a roadmap and governance process for embedding spatial thinking into daily decision-making, most recently supporting the vision laid out in the Town's 2024 Community Plan. The result is that business systems are no longer just transactional platforms—they are becoming part of a new kind of spatial data infrastructure.

Elevating 311 Data into Actionable Intelligence

One of the most impactful examples of this work is the Neighborhood Explorer, an interactive ArcGIS Dashboard that geospatially visualizes historic 311 case data. The Neighborhood Explorer allows users to drill down by neighborhood, date, issue type, and other dimensions to surface trends that would otherwise remain hidden in a spreadsheet or CRM system.

Developed as part of the Community Health Fusion System (CoHFS), the Neighborhood Explorer gives staff across departments real-time access to the pulse of their community. Whether it’s understanding complaint patterns, identifying hotspots for outreach, or evaluating service equity across neighborhoods, the tool makes it easy to bring data into conversations that shape policy and operations.

Unlocking Salesforce and GIS Integration

G&H also developed a first of it’s kind integration between Cary’s Salesforce-based 311 system and its GIS infrastructure. The 311 Operations Map, built within Salesforce, provides a single-sign on experience for users with salesforce and Esri accounts.  This technology provides secure access to the resources within each system and custom GIS interface that allows the user to navigate data spatially using ESRI GIS, while providing tools that allow users to jump to the full Salesforce CRM experience for any 311 record on the map. Because users of this application are fully authenticated with Salesforce and ArcGIS Online, users can be be granted access to a variety of hot-swappable, authoritative webmaps to use underneath active 311 incidents.

This innovative user experience gives GIS creators a pathway to deliver ready to use, thematic GIS maps directly to CRM users without them having to leave the environment in which they work. Our perspective on interoperability is to first understand the strengths of an IT platform and then develop an architecture able to inject geospatial context where it will be easiest to use and immediately useful.

A Model for the Future

Cary’s journey is an example of how connected data systems can transform not only how local governments operate, but how they understand their communities. The Neighborhood Explorer and the Operations Map are not just dashboards, they are a lens for seeing how services are delivered, how people interact with their government, and where to invest for a healthier, more resilient future.

As state and local agencies continue to modernize their platforms, Cary’s approach offers a replicable model for aligning business systems, spatial data, and staff workflows.