Meet Chris Brown, CEO at Mango, Web Mapping for All

Mango is the simplest way to make engaging, insightful web maps – no coding, no servers, no complications. Since 2013, Mango has been enabling professionals with data to find the stories, patterns and trends that provide meaningful insights for their organisations.

Mango’s clients are located in more than 115 countries worldwide and have used Mango to create and share more than 100,000 engaging web maps. They work in a variety of industries – from franchising to engineering to business intelligence.

How has Mango Evolved During the Pandemic?

We worked on a flexible-remote basis for 2 years prior to the pandemic, so already had the workflows and tooling to ensure our team could thrive in a distributed setup.

We have, however, introduced a few refinements, such as remote daily stand-ups in Slack, a new video-first policy for demos and information sharing, and made investments in new software and collaboration tools.

Our core focus during the pandemic has been ensuring a reliable, responsive service for our customers. Mango is cloud-based software designed for remote collaboration and data sharing, so our customers have relied on us over the past year or so to keep their workflows smooth and teams productive.

What Problems does Mango solve in Complex Industries? 

At its core, Mango enables people to distribute location data and maps in the fastest, simplest manner. 

In a complex industry like engineering or surveying, Mango is often deployed as a centralised hub of location data so that different teams can access the latest information, whenever they want, via a web browser. Before, this could have been PDF printouts from a desktop application or time-consuming, in-person meetings.

One pertinent example is Europe’s largest geothermal survey, which Mango is currently deployed in. The project encompasses tens of thousands of square miles of land mass and a team of more than 300 people, with 30 of those required to edit different types of geoinformation all stored and shared in Mango. 

How do you keep Mango at the Forefront of Innovation? 

We keep a close watch on current trends in technology and collaboration software to ensure we’re aligned with or slightly ahead of the demands of the market. For example, in our core industry, we’ve watched the movement from desktop to web and now mobile, aiming to always be ahead of the curve. In mapping, we are now looking at developments like open data and how businesses can unlock internal data silos to generate more value within their organisations.

What Makes you Different from Your Competitors? 

We focus on the 20% of use cases that are used 80% of the time rather than trying to be a fully featured GIS software platform that caters to everyone. 

Using the 80/20 principle helps us stay lean and effective, ensuring we keep the learning curve at a minimum for more casual users of map data.