In business for keeps: Business geographic and competitive advantage
Jennifer Krabbenhoeft
Senior Consultant UGC Consulting 6200 S. Syracuse Way, Suite 222
Englewood, Colorado 80111
303-773-6166, 303-773-6618
Abstract
More than perhaps any other industry, the utilities industry is deeply immersed in geography and
spatial relationships. Facilities, customers and competitors alike can be readily mapped and
identified with a myriad of attributes. This faci Iitates a range of initiatives, from setvice restoration
after an outage to the marketing of products and services. Among the specialized uses of
AM/FM/GIS technology is business geographies applications, which increasing numbers of
utilities are turning toward as they build toward a competitive future. Business geographies
represents a layering of multiple business process systems and a sophisticated vehicle to support
strategic, tactical and operational decisions. Business geographies draw on readily available
demographic, financial, facilities and related data to enable utility strategists to perform both
spatial and market analyses of various competitive scenarios. The applications are oriented
toward protecting existing revenue streams and developing new sources of revenue through
competitive offerings to the marketplace.
Overview of Business Geographic Decision Support Tools
Businessgeographies applications support strategic and tactical decision making through the
visualization and analysis of spatial and nonspatial data derived from both internal corporate and
external sources. These applications can be thought of as database decision support tools that
integrate multiple geographically related variables and use maps for viewing analytical results in
easy to understand ways. The visualization allows for more rapid analysis of large amounts of
information, quicker comprehension of the analytical results, and better visual tools for
communicating the results to use in decision making.
As the utility industry faces increasing competitive pressures, companies are focusing on
maintaining and increasing shareholder value through cost containment and revenue growth
strategies. Utilities are using business geographies tools to assist in determining when and where
to deploy limited resources to achieve revenue and profit margin objectives.
Business Geographics Decision Support Tools and Systems Integration
Because business geographies applications support strategic and tactical decision making, they
frequently require access to information across several enterprise functional areas and related
information systems. For example, a facilities planning application would require marketing and
forecasting data regarding future customer sales growth by geographic area, existing customer
locations and related sales data, and existing facilities location and capacity data. Maintaining
and sharing spatial and nonspatial enterprise data via a common data store is key to the efficient
development of business geographies applications.
To facilitate the use of up-to-date internal corporate files containing address attributes, such as
CIS data sets, supplier/vendor data, and sales intelligence information, addresses should be
centrally geocoded using one of several commercially available TIGER-derived street address
files.
Understanding the Marketplace: Integrating Enterprise and External Data
In an increasingly competitive environment, utilities are under pressure to make rapid and
informed decisions regarding existing markets, as well as the development of strategies to address
new markets. There is a need to define and locate targeted customers for new and existing
products and services and to optimize resources by initially addressing the most profitable
opportunities.
This analysis may involve expanding into new geographic markets or launching new product
offerings within existing geographic markets. In either case, it is important to leverage the wealth
of customer and market information that is available within internal systems and from external
data sources. This wil I include information sources regarding existing and potential customers,
competitors, suppliers, delivery channel partners, service and coverage areas, and facilities data.
An increasing number of spatial and geocoded data sets, with coverage for the United States or
North America, are available from data vendors. Some are more general in nature, and provide
information such as political boundaries, census geography and demographics, geographic area
economic trends, postal boundaries, specific consumer household data, and business site data.
Others are targeted specifically to the energy industry and provide spatial and nonspatial
information about the following:
- Electric and gas distribution company service areas
- Electric and gas energy rates by customer class and company
- Natural gas transmission, distribution, production pipelines
- Natural gas storage faci Iities
- High voltage transmission Iines and substations
- Power plants
- Energy use patterns by type of industry/customer segment
With the vast amount of location referenced information, both internal and external, available
about markets and customers, business geographies applications can provide the ability to
quickly analyze these massive volumes of market data to gain competitive advantage.
Overview of spatial Database Management System Technology
GIS divides data into two distinct types. The first type is “spatial” (or “graphic”) data that describe
geographic, geometric, or topological entities, for example, a line representing a street. The
second type is “aspatial” (or “attribute”) data that provide characteristics about a graphic entity,
for example, a street name. In this overview, GIS and spatial data management are referring to
systems used to manage al I types of spatial data across a corporation, not just facilities
management information.
