In our 2020 State of the Industry Report, our 140+ customers surveyed gave us quantifiable insights into the benefits of drone software in their respective industries. From what we gathered, consumers are still the fastest adopters of drone technology - leaving substantial untapped potential in the business sphere. The results are clear: businesses are poised to take over the drone market. To be competitive, more and more organizations like yours are turning to drone technology to optimize operations and save money.
Getting Started
If you’re a business considering adding drones to your operations, the first step is to evaluate various drone technologies to find the best fit for your organization. A helpful tool in determining this is to brainstorm use cases. There are a variety of industries where drones have proven ROI, and each industry has developed multiple use cases. What will have the most substantial impact on your business? Will this align with your organization’s goals? Consider reading some of our case studies or customer success stories to get started on this. If you’re still stuck, contact us, and we can run through this process with you.
Trial-and-Error
After you’ve figured out the most pertinent use cases, the next step is flying test missions. These results will provide actionable data to use to sell to your executive team. This process is best achieved through trial-and-error. Create a flight plan, fly a mission, and continue tweaking and evaluating your results based on your unique specifications. Share these results internally and update stakeholders to keep your team engaged and receive multifaceted feedback from people who will later be involved in your drone lifecycle.
Test missions can be flown by outsourcing to third-party pilots, or by purchasing a drone, getting your FAA Part 107 License, and flying yourself. DroneDeploy offers flight services to help customers who don’t have their Part 107 licenses yet.
After the test missions are complete, you should have a clear vision of ROI and can begin the process of getting executive engagement.
Drone Program Definition
Once you’ve received your ROI-positive results, it’s time to define your Drone Program. Piloting a drone means flying an FAA registered robotic aircraft in U.S. federal airspace. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) will need to be designed for your organization to ensure safe and compliant operations. Please note that additional restrictions apply to some industries. Safety measures, compliance, repeatability, hardware, pilot vetting, insurance, and company communication all need to be expressly defined in your SOP’s. Many of our clients have internal training programs, flight specification documents, and other internal resources to ensure that all drone pilots are following the same procedures and flying with enterprise-wide consistency. With these details laid out, you can begin training and building out your drone team, ensure that all of your drone operators are briefed on these SOP’s, understand each role, and how best to achieve ROI.
Organizational Engagement
Now that your program is defined and you have data-driven test missions and ROI-positive use cases to back up your cause, it’s time to share your results internally. These include your drone capabilities, ROI calculations, and drone requests forms for anyone in your organization. Sharing these results is the final step in this process. At this point, you can reach your goals with a well-defined, actionable drone program tailored to fit your industry. Our customers have seen savings in time, costs, safety, and more with this.
Benchmarking with DroneDeploy
Looking for more assistance? DroneDeploy provides a host of solutions to fit your organization’s unique needs. For an in-depth, objective view of your current drone program, we’ll assign one of our solutions engineers to review and give you an accurate verification of your Drone Program: how close are you to industry-best practices? What can you improve? We use a 155-question checklist based on 6 Drone Program components: people, software, communication, safety & compliance, operations management, and hardware.
With the results from your Drone Program Benchmark session, you’ll receive an expert view of how your company stacks up against others in your industry and what you’ll need to do to scale your program successfully. To take advantage of this service, contact us.