EASE – ROI Tool for Drone Adoption
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Introduction
In a rapidly evolving drone ecosystem, we identified a common challenge: end users, the consumers of drone technology across sectors - from infrastructure and emergency services to health and environmental monitoring - were operating in silos, facing shared barriers but lacking a platform for collective insight and action.
In response, we launched the End-user Advancement and Sharing Exchange (EASE), a national forum supported by DSIT, to empower these critical users with shared knowledge, coordinated initiatives, and tools to accelerate drone impact.
The Challenge
Despite a promising economic and technological environment for drone adoption in the UK, end users have continued to face three interconnected challenges:
Regulatory Complexity: A complex and often misunderstood regulatory landscape, including the rollout of UK SORA, has hindered organisations from scaling drone operations, particularly Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS).
Funding Gaps: With the completion of the Future Flight Challenge Phase 3 in 2024, and uncertain future funding, many promising projects are struggling to transition into sustainable business cases.
Senior Stakeholder Buy-in: Even where drone applications show clear value, many organisations struggle to secure internal investment due to a lack of consistent, sector-specific evidence on costs, benefits, and long-term value.
The solution
As an innovation integrator, we responded by convening a diverse national group of leading end users through EASE to share collective challenges and define shared priorities.
Initially established in April 2024, EASE has held more than six workshop-based forums in person and remotely. Drawing on these workshops, surveys, and interviews, the EASE Paper in Spring 2025 presented a candid appraisal of the state of drone use in the UK - including maturity benchmarking, cross-sector insights, and case studies.
One of the key outcomes of this collaboration was the development of a Drone ROI System, built with direct input from infrastructure organisations and aligned to the "Big 8" drone use cases identified across sectors (e.g. inspection, delivery and emergency response).
The Drone ROI System enables users to:
Quantify cost and time savings from drone operations
Assess improvements to safety, sustainability, and access
Model the impact of scaling specific applications
Create evidence-based business cases for internal and external investment
This Spring 2025 paper serves as a call to action for organisations to quantify their drone impact and engage with one another for deeper analysis and integration support. The Summer 2025 EASE Paper built on this and focuses on Pathways Forward, prioritising five action areas to unlock the potential 100x market growth in the coming years.
Read our papers here
EASE Paper
Part 1
EASE Paper
Part 2
The impact
The combined effort of EASE and the ROI System has started to reshape how drones are viewed within large organisations:
Shared Understanding: EASE has fostered cross-sector alignment, allowing infrastructure, emergency services and environmental organisations to learn from each other’s drone journeys - bridging the early ‘developing’ stage where most end users feel they currently sit.
Actionable Insight: The ROI System gives procurement and operational teams the numbers they need to unlock internal investment, turning trial use cases into structured, funded programmes.
Strategic Planning: With clearer benchmarking and forecasts, senior leaders are better equipped to plan for technologies like BVLOS, automation, and AI integration over coming years.
We invite you to explore the Drone ROI System - designed to translate innovation into investment - and start quantifying your own journey. Get in touch with EASE Co-chair and Ajuno Co-founder, Will Barnes, to find out more.
