EMAIL INTERVIEW – Mark Laudon and Ken Sinclair

Mark Laudon, the founder of LaudonTech, is a Certified Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Professional with over 25 years of experience in everything to do with mapping.  Mark has worked in every aspect of the mapping industry, ranging from forestry to utilities to government and everything in between. Mark has architected numerous enterprise mapping solutions, and as such, has experienced many botherations. These botherations are what drive Mark to develop unique, award winning solutions to location based problems.

Sinclair:  What is an indoor positioning system?

Laudon:  An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a system to locate objects or people inside a building using radio waves, magnetic fields, acoustic signals, or other sensory information collected by mobile devices*.  Indoor mapping provides a Google Maps like framework for mapping and locating these objects or persons.  Markets researching firms estimate that the global Indoor Location Market is expected to grow to $3.9 billion by 2019.  Indoor mapping is big business.

Sinclair:  What can be mapped indoors?

Laudon:  Basically anything you find in a building:  employees, meeting rooms, IT assets such as computers, printers, etc., facilities assets such as furniture, and building control assets.

Sinclair:  What problems do interactive floor plan maps solve?

Laudon:  Interactive floor plan maps solve the simple problem of trying to locate something indoors.  By attaching an XY location to an object, the object can be easily searched for and displayed on a floor plan.  Paper and PDF floor plans are becoming an inefficient means of quickly locating objects indoors.

Sinclair:  Are there advantages to viewing interactive floor plans on mobile devices?

Laudon:  Definitely.  We have seen a couple of scenarios that illustrate the advantages of viewing interactive floor plans on mobile devices.

1. Moving to a new office can be daunting at times.  To help employees locate and orient themselves to their new surroundings, iPads with Floor Plan Mapping software were distributed at the front door.  Using the dynamic, interactive floor plan map, employees were able to easily search and locate their new seating locations as well as other critical facilities.

2. IT Staff managers would like to dispatch their staff as IT related tasks requests roll in.  IT staff equipped with mobile devices are able to relay their real time location information within a facility.  Managers are able to view their locations via an interactive floor plan map and dispatch their staff more efficiently.

Sinclair:  What tools are available for indoor mapping?

Laudon:  For real time indoor positioning mapping, beacon type technologies used to pinpoint mobile device locations are required.  GPS does not currently work well indoors.  Once a location can be fixed, Floor Plan Mapper can be used to display the locations in real time.

Sinclair:  What is the future of indoor mapping?

Laudon:  Indoor Mapping is just beginning to go mainstream.  As indoor locationing technologies advance, the applications across industries are limitless.  Turn by turn indoor navigation, guiding the visually impaired, managing drones, emergency locations for first responders, and wayfinding are a few potential indoor mapping applications.

Sinclair:  Tell us more about how your work with your clients and how you become part of their enterprise?

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Laudon:  Being able to take a client’s unique indoor mapping requirements and deliver a tailored application is one of our strengths.   Often clients will approach us with a problem; usually a limitation to an existing system.  For example, one of our clients has a hardware appliance from Dell which hosts a database of all the Information Technology components (PC’s, servers, networking equipment, outlets, etc).  One problem they’ve run into is the inability to locate their assets on a floor plan.   After a few back and forth discussions with the client, we went to work designing and customizing a solution that would meet their needs.   Once installed, our application was hosted on our clien'ts own server giving them complete ownership of not only the look and feel (branding) but also the source code.

Sinclair:  What is the best way to get more information on your products and services?

Laudon:  Give us a call (778.387.2797), or contact us via our online contact portal: http://www.floorplanmapper.com/#contact

Sinclair:  Do you have any clients willing to share their Floor Plan Mapper experiences?

Laudon:  Most definitely.  Give us a call (778.387.2797), or contact us via our online contact portal: http://www.floorplanmapper.com/#contact to get connected with some of our existing clients.