By: Valrie Grant, Managing Director, GeoTechVision
Working with utility organizations within the Caribbean region it is always interesting to get some insights on the workflows they use, the various software within the organization, how data is converted between different formats, and the lists goes on. Usually one can quickly tell that many of these organizations are suffering from software overload, departments that operates in silos, segmented workflows, and a clear indication that they need to have a comprehensive Enterprise Needs Assessment and Requirements study done. It is often very apparent that there was an absence of Strategic Information Systems Planning or the implementation of the results of such planning. Overall there seems to be a general lack of appreciation for the critical role Enterprise GIS plays within organizations today.
These are scenarios I have heard and seen a dozen times across the Caribbean region.
Granted, many of these utility organization may even have a GIS section which produces some maps and reports, but they seem not to appreciate that there are other utility companies within the region where GIS is being used as a critical part of their business processes – from tracking and managing assets, supporting the production and transmission design process to being used as a key tool in business operations for example Outage Management, Strategic Capacity Planning and to organize and streamlined inspection and maintenance programs. But even for these organizations, are they there yet? Are these organizations maximising their investment in GIS and other Spatial Technologies to provide real Enterprise value and benefits?
Let’s look at some of the benefits of incorporating Enterprise GIS as part of the Strategic Information Systems planning within organizations.
GIS has the ability to eliminate inaccuracies and inefficiencies connected with:
- The proliferation of maps and data of differing content, accuracy and forms of representation.
- Duplicative and counterproductive efforts of employee effort in the creation, organization, maintenance, management and utilization of maps and asset data in isolated silos. Instead of efforts focused on keeping one set of data correct, man-hours are wasted keeping several sets of possible fragmented data.
- Redundant and sometimes conflicting tasks and workflow resulting from the operations of isolated silos resulting in inconsistent or, incomplete maps and asset data.
- Delayed and ineffective decision making resulting from incomplete, or even conflicting views of what the true picture is within the organization.
Enterprise GIS can unify the business processes within organizations – in this case utility companies can present a common operating picture. Enterprise GIS is the sum of the coordinated personnel efforts working in tandem with integrated systems that support and promote geospatial data development and access across an organization. In the context of utility companies; another way of putting it is that an Enterprise GIS exists when spatial data is readily accessible and effectively used in business processes across the organization:
- to support daily business operations; and
- in making critical intelligence driven Strategic Decisions
Over the past few years, the terms Enterprise GIS has become more common in the GIS community. This is a clear reflection of the value to be derived at the Enterprise or organization wide level.
There has also been a number of changes in recent years that is allowing Enterprise GIS to be a much more attainable goal for organization and particularly utility companies.
These include:
- New Technology
- Easier Deployment Options
- Increased Access to a variety of data sources
- Increased demand from consumers for organizations to be instantaneously aware of the state of service delivery at a specific location at a given time
Why would a Utility Organization want to embark on Enterprise GIS? There are many benefits to doing so.
The nature of utilities will always include delivering services over large geographical areas with several departments and units responsible for managing different aspects of service development/production, service delivery and service maintenance. In addition, there is customer billing and payment collections.
Often a large number of assets and resources are utilised in field work and particularly in emergencies, precise coordination via location aware data and systems are critical. So clear benefits include:
- Integrating geospatial data across multiple departments and serves the entire organization
- Allowing connection to anyone who needs access to GI
- Eliminating data duplication by collecting data once and using many times
- Reducing data maintenance time
- The ability to combine related legacy data
- Improved workflows
- Effective communication
- Enforces data security
- Timely and effective decision making
Utility organizations must come to the recognition that in order to thrive they need integrated information in a real time basis for decision support. While it is commendable to see some utilities recognize the need for GIS in there organization, a utility that is using the traditional GIS implementation is no longer sustainable as they are not deriving the required benefits necessary for a utility organization to operate efficiently and to offer the desired level of customer service.
Why then are organizations within the Caribbean and specifically Guyana not readily embracing enterprise GIS? Is it not obvious that in order to deliver quality service and to make better business and investment decisions Enterprise GIS is no longer an option?
Enterprise GIS is all about improving critical business processes. Utilities that implement Enterprise GIS enhances their operations with tools for quantitative analysis and visualization which helps these organizations to systematically model, measure, and visualize issues with planning and engineering, marketing and sales, and customer service departments. The result an improved Customer experience and more profitable business decisions.
