Contributed by Jen Campbell | Vice President at TRC Companies
Edited by Paul Gerke
In the utilities industry, the proliferation of point-solution-style field apps is an unwelcome triple threat, undermining three critical areas: effective workflows, process efficiency, and data quality. In fact, the proliferation of these mobile apps is amplifying headaches not only for utility field crews but also for operations, GIS, IT, and other teams across the organization. It’s time for utilities to tackle this triple threat head-on.
But to solve this challenge, it’s best to first understand how this happened. Over the last few decades, utilities have implemented multiple enterprise IT systems, including ERP, EAM, and WMS, to improve operational efficiency. However, these platforms suffered from a shortcoming: their capabilities were limited when it came to supporting mobile work teams and managing assets in the field. To augment those limited capabilities, utilities deployed third-party point solutions to fill gaps in functionality within those larger IT platforms. While the intentions were good, it left field workers drowning in poorly connected third-party apps.
The Struggle is Real for Mobile Crews
To perform just one work order in the field, a team might juggle a dozen or more unique third-party apps that were never intended to work with one another. These tools also struggle to work well with the larger IT platforms they claim to support. The result is a tangled digital mess that too often prevents work crews from doing their job effectively rather than achieving the original goal of efficiency.
One common point-solution pain arises in areas with limited or zero connectivity. When network connection is lost–a common situation for work crews–most field app functionality becomes limited, or in worst cases, turns completely useless. Examples of disabled functions include data interaction, work order updates, GIS map rendering, and tracing with Esri’s Utility Network. Not having these features available offline leads to lost efficiency and scheduling delays. These mobile field apps should be designed with a robust offline mode, but instead, work crews are left to methods like manual paperwork, which slows down job completion and introduces errors.
But the headache does not end there; these crews then must retroactively report and update information across all digital apps once they regain connectivity. This adds significant time, especially since workers assume reporting will occur in real time–and set their schedule to reflect this. As a result, rather than being able to move on to the next work order, a crew pauses in a location with adequate connectivity to spend 30, 45, or 60 minutes doing digital paperwork in these mobile apps that they expected to do on-site. The inefficiency is ironic considering these apps were designed to save time.
These kinds of frustrating impacts on crews and workflows are bad enough on their own, but the proliferation of mobile point solutions also creates escalating data and IT issues for utilities. Because these apps do not work well with one another and struggle with complex geospatial data, they have a negative impact on data quality across an organization. As they exchange data, accuracy and detail are often lost in transit because of interoperability issues.
A vivid example of this data chaos happens when multiple point solutions are used for data collection. Those new records are stored in proprietary databases within each point solution and are theoretically delivered to Esri GIS software and the asset management system in an orderly manner. But the reality becomes multiple competing copies of data delivered at different times with differing details – making it impossible for the utility to understand which version is correct. The lack of cohesion across these apps leads to massive data rectification challenges that create inefficiency as well as data trust challenges.
Even worse, these data issues create a cascade of unintended issues across a utility’s operations. In some cases, utilities have crews working with as-built point solutions that are disconnected from GIS and the asset management system. This disconnect means the apps don’t capture information in ways that align with the data rules of those two systems. As a result, all the data records created by work crews are so broken and fragmented that it consequently breaks functionality in Esri Utility Network models such as network tracing.
At a time when data quality and reliability are critical to so many utility initiatives, including grid modernization and AI-enabled analysis, these data problems are an urgent and mandatory issue for utilities to fix.
The root of the problem is these apps’ lack of location-based tools and functions, which cause them to struggle with geospatial data and digital maps — information that is fundamental to today’s fieldwork. Every aspect of work being done in the field by a utility crew uses location-based data and digital maps in some way, yet these third-party point solutions struggle mightily with this fundamental requirement.
For example, many apps claim they offer GIS integration, but really only add a couple of GIS layers onto their basic mapping feature. That means crews have only a fraction of the information and detail they need to do their job. This is insufficient for modern fieldwork, putting crews in the uncomfortable position of making guesses to fill in the gaps. In many cases, the mobile app shows workers a point on the map related to a certain work order and a graphic for a series of poles they’re working on, but that’s it. The field crew can’t access any information about the electrical line spans or vegetation records in the context of their location or work. They also can’t see customer/parcel info or access switch or shutoff asset records. And in the rare case when a mobile app allows access to some of those records, the crew is still blind because they can’t understand how the assets relate to each other, can’t run tracing on the network, and can’t make updates to the asset records as they go. This is frustrating, inefficient, and in many cases unsafe.
That hinders work, introduces potential delays and inaccuracy, and creates obstacles to accurate reporting when as-built work is entered manually back into these apps. This is deeply inefficient and leads to data quality issues that only grow over time.
Mounting Data Access and Data Quality Issues
Poor access to data and poor data quality undermines utility operations in many ways. It adds unnecessary complexity to managing, transferring, and validating information across systems. It also leads to trust issues, where departments across an organization question the accuracy of data and must take time to verify or clean it before they can use it for reporting. When data quality issues are not caught, it results in delays, errors, and inefficiencies that can escalate.
Two examples of this illustrate the negative impact in action. In one scenario, if a utility experiences a service outage and their teams need to quickly determine how many homes were affected, they can’t quickly get the answers they need. They may have a clear understanding of the spatial boundary of an incident, but they can’t produce an accurate number of homes impacted because their GIS records are not reliable enough – all because of data issues caused by third-party mobile apps. As a result, answering that simple question requires a time-intensive process with extensive vetting of data to arrive at an accurate number.
In another case, a utility can’t get new construction data entered digitally by their work crews in the field because mobile point-solution apps lack basic functionality to perform this essential task. This may mean all of the as-built new construction information must be captured on paper and end up stacked on a desk – resulting in a multi-month, physical paperwork backlog before that as-built info is successfully added to critical computing systems.
The effects of these data quality issues are cumulative. As the utility environment evolves, relying on low-quality data without proper governance in the system of record hinders the ability to address key priorities, such as rising demand, extreme weather, growing customer expectations, and regulatory compliance. With increased regulation and reporting requirements, the importance of high-quality data can’t be ignored.
Let’s also consider the impact of utilities still employing paper-based or manual methods. Traditionally, the output of as-built designs and documentation has been physical paperwork with redlining, which is intended to capture the final fieldwork execution for a new project, including what assets were installed as planned and where changes to the plan occurred. These traditional methods cause problems. People can misinterpret handwritten red lines, leading to inaccuracies. The very nature of this approach is time-consuming, resulting in a massive backlog that creates additional problems, as data updates have yet to be made in the system of record. Consequently, field crews must perform duties using antiquated, inaccurate, and incomplete data. This can also lead to compliance challenges–when utilities have inaccurate data or have had to heavily “scrub” data coming from these mobile field apps–and this situation collides with the rigorous regulatory rules related to the system of record and traceability. These are just some of the ways that these mobile data issues ripple downstream in ways that cause operational problems for utilities.
A Smarter Mobile App Strategy
Despite the good intentions behind third-party point solution deployment, this ever-increasing proliferation of poorly connected mobile apps creates more problems than it solves. The triple threat needs to be neutralized. To do that, utilities must adopt a mobile computing strategy that supports all field use cases universally rather than using disparate point solutions.
Utilities also need a mobile computing strategy that makes interoperability and GIS/geospatial information a centerpiece rather than an afterthought — built with native, direct access to data and toolsets from work and asset management (WAM) and geographic information system (GIS) platforms without forcing workers to work blind or rely on paper documents.
Another key need for utilities is robust “offline” capabilities that enable work crews to do their job even when connectivity is poor. That means having all necessary data pre-loaded on the device and full support for Esri’s Utility Network data model and network tracing. It also means having the ability to create/capture new GIS features, work orders, asset geometry, as-built details, and more – all while offline – and then have it uploaded in a way that preserves data quality and trustworthiness once connectivity is available again. That eliminates so many of the inefficiencies and data quality problems discussed above.
That technology exists today, and many utilities have already swapped out fragmented point solutions for multi-use-case mobile applications purpose-built to support location-based data and digital maps. TRC’s Lemur mobile mapping solution, plus the utility’s work management app of choice, such as Salesforce Field Service or SAP Service and Asset Manager, have solved for a range of use cases from leak survey to vegetation management to as-built new construction. And many of these utilities have this solution for five-plus unique workflows within their field program. As more unique use cases come online for each utility, they see greater efficiency and more reliable data.
This strategy and technology enabled these utilities to connect systems, people, and processes in a way that empowers field teams to perform essential operations with ease — avoiding the workflow breakdowns, process inefficiencies, and data quality challenges discussed above. This approach also provided a foundation for field crews to perform more advanced work across a wide set of use cases, including:
- More accurate and detailed asset inspections
- More compliant vegetation surveys and mitigation strategies
- Faster pre-construction assessments and planning
- More efficient post-storm damage assessment
- Digitized 811 compliance
- Quicker construction tracking and traceability and posting to the back office
- Accelerated maintenance and repair
Moving past disconnected point solutions and ending the operational chaos their proliferation has caused means utilities can better support the critical work that field crews are doing. It equips those teams with the right tools, allowing them to increase their positive impact each time their truck rolls for a project on-site.
About the Author
Jen Campbell is a vice president focusing on product management for the Lemur mobile mapping solution at TRC, a global professional services firm providing integrated strategy, consulting, engineering, and applied technologies in support of the energy transition. In this role, Campbell drives strategy and technology development for the Lemur solution, which brings the power of geospatial technology to field workers.
Campbell is a seasoned IT leader with over 19 years of experience in driving innovation, services, and product strategy across ERP, GIS, AI, eCommerce, CMS, and SaaS technologies. Prior to her current role, Campbell managed a portfolio of over 30 concurrent projects, working with enterprise systems across various domains, including FSM, MRP, CRM, CXM, PLM, POS, and more. Jen holds an MBA in Information Systems and a BFA in Visual Communications and currently resides near Boulder, Colorado.