Spatial meets ERP: The value of integration
Andy Schlegel GPU Energy 2800 Pottsville Pike Reading, PA 19640 Dennis F. Beck Smallworld Systems, Inc. 5600 Greenwood Plaza Blvd. Suite 300 Englewood, CO 80111 Seeking to get a head start on competition and position themselves for the future, progressive utilities are relying on tightly integrated information technology solutions to gain strategic advantage. To stay competitive in the coming decade, utilities will need to operate more efficiently, hold the line on costs and deliver higher levels of customer service. At the same time, they will have to have the foresight to recognize emerging market opportunities and the flexibility to capitalize on them when they arise. What's more, as consolidation of the industry continues, successful utilities will need to have high-functioning processes in place so they can realize the greatest gains from mergers and acquisitions-whether they are acquiring companies or being acquired by others. These are tough challenges. The degree to which a utility rises to meet them will depend to a large degree on its ability to leverage information across the enterprise. In the emerging utility industry, competitive advantage will depend to an increasing degree upon advanced processes enabled by the free flow information within an organization. Ultimately, a key to success in the utility markets of the early 21st century lies in the integration of the two dominant information solutions for the utility business environment-Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems and Spatial Resource Planning (SRP) systems. The close integration of these systems provides the fertile soil that will allow a utility to flourish in the decade ahead. ERP and SRP: Complementary Systems As the names suggest, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Spatial Resource Planning (SRP) systems are different yet complementary technologies. Both make it possible for users across an organization to use a common body of data for different types of purposes. ERP solutions are built around a central database of shared business information that is used across the enterprise. ERP software is used to manage all aspects of a business. It encompasses applications for accounting and finance, human resources, physical assets, supply chains and maintenance. Commonly used ERP corporate software solutions include those from SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft. SRP solutions are parallel to ERP systems. While ERP solutions are built upon a body of traditional business data, SRP solutions are built upon a body of spatial data-or information on the location and interaction of physical facilities, customers, work crews and other elements that can be tied to a particular geographic location. SRP solutions build upon this foundation. SRP gives users tightly integrated solutions for managing power outages, analyzing the operation of distribution systems, optimizing the design of facilities, evaluating market opportunities and carrying out many other processes that require spatial data. SRP solutions are broader than geographic information systems (GIS) or automated mapping/facilities management (AM/FM) systems. Neither of these terms suggests the extension of a technology across the full realm of an enterprise. A true SRP system is always an enterpriselevel solution.Bringing Together Islands of Automation Both ERP and SRP systems bridge the islands of automation that exist in today's utility environments. These islands arose in an evolutionary manner, as technology became available to automate different processes. IT systems were deployed as departmental applications rather than as enterprise solutions. 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. The Advantages of Integration Alone, both SRP and ERP alone are powerful, enterprise-level systems that allow an organization to function more effectively. But when working together, they have a synergistic effect that brings more value to each. The seamless blending of SRP- and ERP-based information creates unprecedented opportunities to streamline work processes, improve customer service, evaluate operational issues, identify strategic opportunities and make better-informed business decisions. The integration of these systems opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. A few examples from a utility environment with integrated SRP-ERP systems:
In a mature, integrated ERP-SRP environment, all records relating to assets in a distribution network can be viewed via standard applications on the desktop. In larger environments, thousands of users could have access to the same data-whenever they need it. This opens up a wealth of possibilities to streamline processes, cut costs and improve customer service-the keys to success in a competitive business environment. Why Aren't We There Today? All of this begs the question of why the integration of SRP and ERP systems is for many utilities largely an activity of the decade ahead rather than the previous decade. The answer goes back to the problem of standalone IT solutions. The first order of business has been the integration of the systems and processes that use business data and the integration of the systems and processes that use spatial data. This ongoing work has brought us comprehensive ERP solutions and emerging yet powerful SRP solutions. At the same time, the underlying technology that supports this integration is just emerging. At a technical level, integrated ERP and SRP solutions are made possible by developments in IT that allow bundles of spatial data from an SRP system to be viewed as just another data record in an ERP system. This means that it is now possible for facilities and operational data to be viewed alongside corresponding data related to financial transactions, human resources and historical records. And, finally, recent advances in communications networks and desktop computing systems allow utilities to gain the greatest benefit from the integration of systems. Today's Web browsers and company intranets, for instance, make it possible for virtually any user on a corporate network to access and view data from across the enterprise-as long as systems are integrated. And none of this is to say that integrated ERP-SRP solutions are not at work today. They are a reality in some forward-looking utilities. New Orleans-based Entergy, for instance, has an operational ERP-SRP solution at work today. This solution encompasses a comprehensive. Operations Management System that supports both day-to-day network management as well as emergency outage management activities. The system tracks reports of outages in the utility's electric distribution system, runs network traces, identifies common pieces of equipment that are related to all calls and makes predictions about devices that may have failed. Entergy's Operations Management System, in turn, is integrated with the company's Oraclebased Agent Information System, which holds information used by customer service representatives. The integration of the two systems allows customer service representatives to use the Agent Information System to enter reports of outages, which are passed on to the Operations Management System, and to access information from the Operations Management System on the locations, causes and expect duration of outages. This makes it possible for customer service representatives to give customers specific, accurate information on why they lost power and when they can expect power to be restored. When you look around the industry, you can find many other examples of progressive utilities that are already realizing the benefits of ERP-SRP integration. But, at the same time, you can find many examples of companies that aren't there in any meaningful way-companies that are held back by patchworks of older information systems and ineffective processes. As we enter a new decade-one that is sure to bring continuing dramatic changes in the utility industry-utilities would do well to follow the lead of the progressive companies that are already capitalizing on investments in integrated ERP-SRP solutions. Today, across North America alone, dozens of forward-looking utilities are moving ahead-with blistering speed, in many cases-with extremely functional, tightly integrated ERP-SRP solutions. They are demonstrating the potential of integrated solutions to cut costs, create operational efficiencies, and improve service delivery and deliver competitive advantage. At a technology level, we have what we need. Now, the issue is more a matter of the human dynamic. We need to recognize the potential of ERP-SRP integration, set high goals and push forward. | ||
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