If you’re looking to connect with the C-Suite in a meaningful way, golf is a pretty good place to start. They watch it. They play. They obsess over it. And in between playing golf and obsessing over it is where our idea lives.

Microsoft Course IQ – a digital tool that helps golfers apply better course strategy by using the Microsoft Cloud to unlock unprecedented data-driven intelligence for nearly every golf course in North America. A demonstration of the power of the Microsoft Cloud in the hands of the C-suite while they are on the fairway.

Finally, the C-suite, who rarely interact with the IT infrastructure of their business, have a tangible example of what the cloud can do on the golf course, so they understand how it can help in the office.

Obviously, we couldn’t just present the C-suite with millions of data points across every golf course in America. We needed to apply the data in a way that made it accessible and usable. That’s where the drones came in. We fly drones over some of the most famous golf courses in the America. Using programmatically generated flight plans, we captured over 10 thousand photos using photogrammetry software, we geotagged each photo by correlating GPS logs generated by the drones to time stamps on the photographs, then we fed all of the photos into Pix4D Mapper to generate high-resolution 3D maps.

Ultimately, we integrated 99,014,934,528 pixels with real-time weather data, course architecture data such as soil composition and historical player data like performance by season, all into one seamless and intuitive demonstration of what the Microsoft Cloud can do.

We launched Course IQ as a beta version in the off season and the results have exceeded our expectations. In just a short period of time, we had over 40,000 visits to the site, with an average engagement of over 6 pages per visit. These weren’t just visitors browsing around, they were C-Suite decision makers using cloud-enabled intelligence to study their local course. And with each click, search and flyover, Microsoft Cloud earned more credibility with them.

In addition, while we didn’t set out to connect with startups, to our surprise, because of the unique capabilities of the data engine we developed, multiple organizations have inquired about using it and the Microsoft Cloud to kick start their own new products.

In the end, we proved that best way to connect with the C-Suite is not to disrupt their Saturday afternoon on the couch, but rather make it better for them on the course.