Spatial meets ERP: The value of integration
Take for example the predecessor to SRP, Geographic Information Systems (GIS). For utilities
GIS may date back two decades or more, with systems that automated the time-consuming
manual processes involved in mapping their widely distributed facilities. They worked
marginally well for that purpose. But in most cases they were deployed as standalone solutions
accessed by small teams of engineers and technicians. It seemed that great progress was
achieved if the data could be uploaded to a legacy mainframe system.
Oftentimes, the data generated in GIS systems was output to paper for use by other personnel or
manually entered into other systems. Some mapping data would be translated to another system
and then the datasets would diverge, supporting unique, complex applications that would require
gigabytes of data. The inefficiencies here are obvious. Data often had to berecreated to be used
by others. And when different versions of the same data live in different systems, they inevitably
become out of synch. Changes made in one system aren't reflected in another system. So soon
the organization finds itself with data that it can't trust.
Aside from problems of data inaccuracy and redundancy, there are big issues with data
accessibility. To this day, the data created in many geographic information systems isn't readily
or immediately available to the full range of users who need it. In too many cases, analysis
engineers who work to optimize designs don't have immediate access to the data created by
designers who might be right down the hall. Business office personnel have to wait to get the
data they need to gage the costs of planned construction. Construction and repair crews in the
field find that the maps they are using don't reflect recent construction work. And on it goes.
The story is the same with day-to-day utility operations. In many utility environments, outage
reports are received by customer service personnel then sent to a printer in a dispatch center. The
printed reports spill out onto the floor, are picked up and pinned to a wall-size map. A dispatcher
then makes some educated guesses on where repair crews ought to look for the source of
outages. Repair crews, in turn, drive around and looking for trouble spots. Meanwhile, in the
administrative offices, executives and company spokespeople make regular calls to the dispatch
center to try to gain an understanding of the cause and scope of the outage and the expected
duration. Customer service personnel, with their important role in dealing with affected
customers don't have timely information available to them from their customer information
systems.
The inefficiencies of such outage management processes are obvious. And they can be costly. It
is not uncommon for a given utility to be fined millions of dollars because of its inadequate
SAIDI ratings-the performance on the System Average Interruption Duration Index. That
number, watched closely by regulators, gages the average amount of time that a customer's
service is interrupted during a reporting period. A multi-million-dollar fine is a lot of money. It
would pay for a comprehensive IT solution that would allow a utility to respond to outages
faster.
Breaking down Barriers
It's clear that as diverse IT system have evolved, so have the barriers between departments.
When you have multiple systems that don't communicate with each other, you have different
groups of people controlling different types of information. This, by default, leaves you with a
management-centric environment.
In a management-centric environment, you have distinct teams of people with invisible barriers
between them. You have customer call people, purchasing and accounting people, dispatch
people, service crews, engineering teams. Each controls its own processes and information.
Often, information doesn't always flow freely between departments. Even batch updates between
systems, in which large blocks of data based in one system are updated in another, are seldom
available in real time. It is the responsibility of the company management to sort out the
problems associated with the disjointed work processes that exist between the different
organizations.
An integrated SRP-ERP solution breaks down these barriers between departments, making
information accessible to users throughout the enterprise. Integrated solutions make it possible
for diverse applications to share the same body of underlying spatial data. This allows the full
realm of operational and facilities data to be made readily available to those who need it-
whenever they need it.
