Fastned, driven by their mission to provide "electric freedom" for EV drivers, has set an ambitious goal of establishing 1,000 charging stations by 2030. As Head of Location Intelligence, Kenny Ling plays a key role by delivering detailed and timely spatial data to the site acquisition team, so they can make informed decisions in the field.
When Kenny joined Fastned, the Site Acquisition team was new to GIS and adoption of tools was a challenge. Location intelligence came from fragmented, self-sourced, government websites that were slow to load and required multiple browsers to view. Professional tools like QGIS were overly technical, and required mastering complex software to make use of. Adding to these challenges, business users struggled with data reliability concerns, as the information didn't automatically update. Kenny started to search for a more intuitive platform that would bring all their data into one place and be intuitive enough for all employees to use.
From the first upload, Kenny knew he had found something powerful enough to support their data needs. "We were most impressed by the speed of rendering – I’ve never seen anything like that before,” shared Kenny. As he explored the interface, he built conviction this was something the Site Acquisition team could easily adopt. “We knew we could not find this combination of power and ease-of-use anywhere else on the market. With company-wide adoption as the goal, the decision to adopt Felt was easy," reflects Kenny.
Through its native integration with Databricks, staff gained direct access to their source of truth data, while interactive components and filters made the system accessible to non-technical users. The platform's daily automated updates ensured that information remained current, and its visualization capabilities struck an ideal balance between power and accessibility, making complex spatial data easier to understand and work with.
After implementing Felt, Fastned experienced significant improvements in the adoption of location data in Site Acquisition decision-making. “Before Felt, it was such a battle to get people to use and to trust maps. Now it is a critical part of the acquisition team’s decision-making process and that’s huge.”
Kenny credits the integration with Databricks for widespread adoption. “The direct Databricks integration substantially enhanced confidence in location data across the organization because teams could now trust they were working with accurate, up-to-date information.” It also made it easier for Kenny’s team to interact with Databricks by eliminating the technical burden of developing custom connectors between their mapping platform and Databricks, or viewing spatial data in Databricks.
Usability also played a key role. "The beauty of Felt is that it's inviting to use. When you look at Felt, you don't think BI software, you don't think GIS software –it’s all of those things but the end user can work with it like any other document," Kenny says.
