// Case Study

Business intelligence for global resources revealing true value

Global Surface Intelligence

IMPACT

GSI won a place in mission #1 in the cohort at the Seraphim Space Camp, the programme dedicated to the rapidly growing SpaceTech start-up sector backed by Seraphim Capital, the world’s only SpaceTech Venture Fund (April 2018)GSI successfully raised £844k by Par Equity and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund (Jun 2018)Securing contracts with several of the Forbes global 2000 list in the Space, Energy, Insurance, Test and Certification and Utility sectorsFormed several global partnerships with vertically aligned decision support providers in North America, Asia, Australasia and EuropeGSI opened a new office in the centre of Edinburgh and strengthened their executive team: Peter Young and George Lindsay are now non-executive director and chief operating officer, respectively (Oct and July 2018).The addition of full-time staff since Feb 2018 include : Chief Engineer, Principal Remote Sensing specialist, Principal Environmental specialist, Web/API developer, Sales manager, Office manager, Finance manager, CFO, and consultants specialising in other remote sensor technologiesThe creation and release of software-as-a-service products replacing research-oriented approaches to revenue growthThe company has a “build bridges” rather than “build walls” attitude to partner development. While some companies perhaps focus on business overlaps as a negative, GSI actively seeks to identify and form partnerships creating a richer proposition and unlocking more value for clients.

RATIONALE FOR INTERVENTION

As a result of initial conversations started more than 12 months ago followed by exposure to GSI’s technical capabilities, the Catapult team has realised the tremendous potential of the machine learning capabilities that the company applies to EO data. Especially when combined with the breadth of market opportunities. The timing of the sprint work coincided with the start of the Seraphim Space Camp programme on which GSI won a place in the first mission #1 cohort in April 2018. This helped to focus the strategy and contributed to the ramp up in the commercial activities which GSI embarked over that period. Indeed, it had an influence in the success of the significant summer 2018 investment round.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Global Surface Intelligence is an Edinburgh-based earth observation and artificial intelligence as-a-service provider. With deep roots in environmental sciences and next generation artificial intelligence, GSI transforms satellite data, UAV, and ground survey data into commercially valuable information. This can be instantly consumed by end users, data brokers, market places, geospatial data publishers and imagery aggregators.Since the appointment of Gavin Tweedie as CEO in June 2017, with his extensive experience in growing businesses and creating market leading products and services, the company has concentrated on expanding its client base with global companies. Scaling-up the business is fully underway, and a team is being been purpose built for rapid success containing a group of talented specialists from the commercial world, EO, environmental sciences, AI and software engineering domains.

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Participating in the business sprint helped us rapidly bring important matters into sharp focus and exposed us to new thinking around the design and delivery of space based applications. Furthermore, the sprint enabled the Catapult to fully grasp our collaborative spirit and willingness to partner with others in the industry to bring high value solutions to the corporate sector.

For more information about Global Surface Intelligence please contact:

info@catapult.org.uk01235 567999

SPRINT FOCUS

The proposal has been formulated on the basis of supporting GSI’s plan to scale-up. The sprint focus was directed towards: two key strategic objectives at the beginning of the sprint work:

OUTCOMES

The outcome from the sprint work was presented as a slide-deck containing specific analyses and recommendations, structured as follows:

WP1 – MARKET Key market sizing information on markets GSI is targeting.Comparative ranking of the markets GSI is targeting.Recommendations on market segments to prioritise and how to approach them, providing, where possible, links with potential customers.

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WP2 - TEAMIdentify current team’s gaps and bottlenecks.Recommendations on best practices for ‘team work’.Recommendation on areas of expertise needed to scale-up.Recommendation for transition plan to achieving optimised team structure.

Analysing and defining the most suitable market opportunities and customer groups to sustain the scale-up phase

Suggesting the most suitable team structure, composition and skillset to sustain the scale-up phase