ESRI is a leader in the geographic information system industry. A geographic information system (GIS) organizes information by location. It provides a way to manipulate, analyze, and display information that is relevant to a physical location, for example, sales and marketing information for a specific city or region, or environmental data used to monitor a watershed.

Unlike standard mapping, which is a static presentation, GIS associates layers of information (physical coordinates, areas, events, business data) with a location and then interprets the relationship between those layers through a visual and tabular display. This makes it a dynamic and interactive system of data. This technology enhances communication and decision-making for a broad range of enterprises and organizations.

Integral to a GIS is data retrieval, data enrichment, and data loading. Data enrichment, or geocoding, is the process of preparing data for a GIS by adding spatial positioning information (for example, latitude, longitude, census block, census track) to an address or locale. The geocoding information can then be loaded into an ESRI database where it is available to a GIS to depict the spatial relationships between data.