| GeoTechnologies Offer Competitive Edge for Utilities
By J.D. Wilson With the economic recovery of the past few years, geographic information systems (GISs) are in growing demand once again. But, with a shake-out of the competition and rapidly-changing client expectations, the industry looks far different than it did as little as five years ago.
No place are these changes more evident than in GIS development for the utility group of industries - particularly electric and gas energy and telecommunications. In fact, many utilities, too, are changing so fast they bear little resemblance to their historical form as large, cumbersome, conservative pseudo-monopolies.
Consolidation, downsizing, re-engineering, globalization - familiar words in the halls of most major American corporations - are now equally familiar in the boardrooms of the nation's utilities. Long distance telecommunications was first to experience these revolutionary, ground-up changes with the break-up of AT&T in the 1980s.
Long distance service became a commodity item and market share was gained by offering the lowest price. Differentiation among providers is becoming next to impossible to achieve. The big three - AT&T, MCI and Sprint - spend billions of dollars trying to win the minds of the consuming public.
Presently, newspapers carry daily accounts of the war between local telephone operators and cable television franchises that will ultimately transform them from non-competing, regulated utilities to nationally-syndicated commodity enterprises.
Electric and gas utilities also are discovering the freedom - and fierce competition - that comes with deregulation. Under provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 1993, any power provider can now access another provider's transmission lines. The stakes are high and utilities across the nation are girding for battle. Consider these recent events:
• In January, 1994, Pacific Gas and Electric announced an agreement with cable-TV giant Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and Microsoft to test a means for providing on-demand home energy services utilizing an interactive computer network.
• Just last month, Public Service of Colorado (PSC) and IBM announced a $500 million joint venture to provide similar two-way communication with this utility's customers. The agreement forms a new subsidiary, "e prime," which, unlike PSC, will be unfettered from supervision by the state Public Utilities Commission.
• UtiliCorp United, Kansas City, Mo., in its bid to become the first "national utility," is challenging PSC to provide power to industrial users in Pueblo, Colo. GIS as Strategic Tool
Consequently, GIS, first embraced by utilities as a means to more efficiently manage the map records of their vast infrastructures, must now be transformed into a dynamic decision-support tool serving a variety of mission-critical functions.
Utility executives are revisiting their GIS programs, updating their expectations and expanding their objectives to gain an advantage in their new economic order.
"GIS projects can't be financially justified based on solving traditional mapping problems," said Glenn E. Montgomery, chairman and chief executive officer of UGC Consulting, Englewood, Colo. "They must incorporate business applications that help utilities generate new business."
Montgomery, a GIS consultant specializing in utility applications, sees a new GIS mission forming. It incorporates a greater emphasis on executive decision support, with geographic data integrated seamlessly into other corporate databases to create new business applications.
"Business geographics - applications first used by food stores, retailers and franchisers - will be applied to local utilities in an effort to provide better customer service and competitive analysis," he added, emphasizing that GIS will be at the center of applications like geo-demographic analysis, demand-side marketing, sales force management, market research, emergency preparedness, industrial and economic development support, even communications with regulatory agencies.
"In progressive utilities, executive teams see GIS as a strategic decision support tool," Montgomery said. "They will use it in determining asset utilization, expansion, capital expenditures and marketing strategies. The battle for market share will be fought and won using GIS data sets," he said. "so long as those data enhance customer knowledge." MIS Meets GIS
To meet mission-critical, organizational requirements, MIS departments are beginning to champion GIS - a technology they have scarcely noticed, much less understood. "In the past, GIS development grew up separate from other information technology," said John Antenucci, president of PlanGraphics, a GIS consulting firm in Frankfort, Ky. "MIS let the engineering departments develop the systems without much supervision or support because it seemed to have nothing to do with the transaction-based systems they were accustomed to.
"But MIS departments are changing," he added. "Geography is a common denominator in most of their data and they are gaining a greater sensitivity to spatially-enhanced data systems."
Antenucci noted that in the past only about two percent of his clients counted their MIS directors on the GIS development team. "Today that number is more like 25 percent," he commented. "They are recognizing that in the robust systems of the future, geography is an important element."
"Traditionally, MIS departments have not understood the graphic nature of GIS," said Mark L. Epstein, president and chief executive officer of Graphic Data Systems Corp. (GDS), a GIS software developer based in Englewood, Colo. "But the barriers are breaking down." Next-Generation GIS
To accommodate the increasing demands to serve multiple business applications, GIS developers are aggressively enhancing their systems, sometimes even redesigning them from the ground up.
"We're finally seeing the development of true client-server architectures, not mainframe batch systems that mimic the client-server environment," said Antenucci. "Today's organizations require multi-tiered client-server technology, typically with a mainframe functioning as an enterprise server, a secondary server at the department level and a host of workstations and personal computers in both hardwired and cellular networks. Software will have to handle these multiple levels effectively."
In addition, Antenucci anticipates a standardization of application interfaces. "We're moving in that direction," he said. "Developers are working on eliminating the proprietary data formats and standardizing transmission protocols."
Older layer-based systems may prove to be dinosaurs as newer, object-oriented technologies mature. Developers are recognizing that spatial data is just one element in a company's total information spectrum, and it must be accessible to all departments.
"Our mandate from utility clients is threefold," explained GDS's Epstein. "First they want us to link our software seamlessly with their other systems including SCADA, automated meter reading, dispatch - systems that have a direct impact on their performance and bottom line. Second, they want GIS data that can be accessed throughout the company, instead of just on specially-equipped workstations. Finally, we must develop migration tools to enable them to shift from their first-generation systems without jeopardizing their existing spatial data investment." Strategic Alliances and Partnerships
As GIS becomes more closely linked with mainstream computing, it also falls into the increasingly common practice of out-sourcing. Utilities are looking to ally themselves with experts who can more effectively manage their information technology and free their capital and intellectual resources for their core business - providing energy service to customers.
By some estimates, as many as 30 percent of utilities are out-sourcing some or all of their GIS functions as well as other IT operations. In the recent agreement between PSC and IBM, for example some 400 MIS employees now with PSC will be offered jobs at IBM. Most will stay at the same jobs but they will have a new employer. Through the arrangement PSC expects to save approximately $190 million over ten years.
"A number of our clients are looking for out-sourcing of all geo-technical information," said Mark Jadkowski, vice president at James W. Sewall Company, Old Town, Maine, which specializes software development, aerial photography, photogrammetry and data conversion services. "In some cases they want our people at their location, but others don't care where we are as long as we deliver the information they need."
GDS's Epstein concurs, but says the trend goes much deeper. "GIS has a reputation for being a money pit," he explained. The reason for the reputation, he says, is lack of experience on the client's part and lack of accountability on the vendors' parts.
"In the past, GIS projects were developed by committee, including a project manager, perhaps a few other utility department representatives, consultants and vendor representatives from the hardware, software and data providers," He said. "It was a big group, but not a happy family.
"Each vendor delivered his part of the system according to spec and got a check, but no one took any risk - except for the project manager and he had the least experience and the least ability to bring all the parts together successfully," he said. Technology-Driven Advances
Driven on one side by accelerated customer requirements, GIS is equally affected by the interplay of technological improvements. Hardware is more powerful, hand-held technologies are exploding, wireless networks are emerging as viable alternatives, database design is improving.
Perhaps the best news for both GIS and utility professionals is the convergence of GIS with other GeoTechnologies, including satellite imaging and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which dramatically reduce the cost of collecting and maintaining GIS data.
Traditionally, data acquisition or conversion from paper to digital maps was the largest hurdle in implementing a GIS - accounting for 60 percent or more of the total project cost. With lower-cost, higher-resolution satellite images, portable GPS locators, laser range-finders and digital aerial photography, the cost of acquiring and maintaining data has been substantially reduced.
"Utilities represent one of our largest growth segments for GPS products," said John Herrgott, product marketing manager for the GIS data capturing unit at Trimble Navigation Limited, Sunnyvale, Calif. "The technology has become sophisticated enough to record not just points, but also lines and areas. It's flexible enough to capture whatever data they require."
In fact, says Herrgott, it is now possible for utilities to utilize satellite imaging to develop a low-cost, accurate land base and then perform a field inventory utilizing GPS technology, collect information on each plant item, down-load it into a GIS and create a spatially-accurate and up-to-date digital map without ever looking at their old paper maps.
"They find they can collect current information that is more accurate than their original maps," Herrgott confirmed, "and they can avoid the risk of digitizing errors."
The potential in cost savings is undeniable. "The combination of GPS and related technologies displaces the map maintenance process that has been in place for a hundred years," said UGC's Montgomery. "It's taken right into the customer's front yard.
"Add to that other economical data sets, like ETAK or TIGER files, space imaging and marketing data from companies like Nielsen or Donnelly and you have a powerful strategic business and marketing tool," he said. Gaining a Competitive Advantage
Of course that is the whole point: GIS has become a value-added, business-decision support tool. For many utilities it will be the center of their strategic information model. And interest in the technology continues to grow.
According to AM/FM International (for "Automated Mapping and Facilities Management) - the trade association representing GIS in utilities - membership has grown steadily and paid attendance at their annual conference has more than doubled since 1989.
"Participation is growing," said James Black, director of communications for AM/FM International. "More importantly, we're discerning a heightened sense of urgency among our members. They know this technology is critically important to the success of their businesses." About the Author:
J.D. Wilson is a freelance writer in Denver, Colo., specializing in the GeoTechnologies. He can be reached at 303-751-7636. Back |
