For a variety of reasons, one of the most popular integration pairings in the utility industry is ArcGIS and IBM Maximo. Looking at past blogs or our most popular social media posts will affirm that most of our audience is very interested in what ArcGIS-Maximo integration is all about, but there’s also a substantial piece of system integration that we haven’t touched on as frequently: integrating additional systems with this excellent pairing.
There’s extremely valuable data stored in CIS, back-office systems, or other commercial or homegrown solutions built using a relational database (RDBMS) that, like ArcGIS and Maximo data, can be synchronized to achieve powerful results. Let’s investigate further.
Beyond Maximo and ArcGIS, many of the most popular asset management systems in the utility industry can be integrated with each other. HxGN EAM, ABB Asset Suite, and Oracle WAM are just a few examples, but if your organization is using a homegrown RDBMS-based system, that’s likely compatible too. For a full list of compatible systems, check out our platform overview.
(Additional connections to systems not listed in our platform overview are usually achievable through custom development, so if you don’t see one of your systems listed, reach out to us!)
Implementing an integration can be a big, time-consuming task, so why should you consider spending all that time setting up an integration between your systems? The truth is that time is already being spent on manual tasks that an integration can work to solve. In the case of integration implementation, it is a matter of spending a little time to save a lot of time.
For starters, GIS and IT workers already spend enough time completing tedious tasks as part of their daily operations. The process of finding errors, updating values, and double-checking data between systems is often boring, repetitive, and can lead to burnout and fatigue if it’s the only thing employees are doing all day – especially if they have to do the same tasks in multiple systems. But this process is also a necessary part of managing large amounts of GIS and other important utility data. The real question is how you can ensure your data is accurate while also ensuring your employees are not wasting time on unnecessary manual tasks.
Answer: integration. Despite the initial time investment required for integration implementation, employees will end up saving far more time in the long run. Working in siloed systems (as is the current norm) is a massive time sink for many IT and GIS employees in the utility industry and requires serious resource and budget allocation. Many of our own customers have shared that prior to integrating, most of their time was spent fixing errors and navigating slow, antiquated systems. Updating and integrating them not only improved the speed at which users could complete data and asset management-related tasks; it also made the process far less cumbersome.
Plus, the more systems your organization is using, the more time it takes to make sure the data in each system is accurate. If your organization is using two or more systems to track GIS data, asset locations, customer data, and more, the time savings you’ll experience by integrating those systems gets even larger with each additional integrated system. Instead of sorting through mountains of data in multiple systems looking for errors and entering updates every week, employees can simply run an automated, full-compare synchronization using the Geonexus Integration Platform to do the job for them.
Being able to complete most of your daily tasks in one program that updates values, tracks errors, and ensures accurate data automatically is usually enough of a reason to integrate by itself, but there are other benefits to adding systems beyond ArcGIS and Maximo.
For example, adding a connection to SAP or another RDBMS-based system could allow your organization to synchronize GIS data from ArcGIS with work orders from Maximo and customer billing information from Oracle Utilities. Having all that data in one place makes it extremely easy for field workers to access any information they might need to complete a job and satisfy a customer.
Additionally, being able to access data from multiple sources makes it easy to make data-informed business decisions. When your organization needs to use data to decide matters involving operating budgets, resource allocation, or whether to make an expensive equipment upgrade, being able to use GIS, CIS, and EAM data gives you the best chance of making the right decision the first time.
The most important aspect of integration beyond ArcGIS and Maximo is the limitless customization that comes along with it. The Geonexus Integration Platform already features expansive configurability for existing connectors, but having the option to build custom connections to additional systems offers unparalleled usefulness. No matter which systems your organization uses to provide utility services to customers, the Geonexus Integration Platform can help speed up your data and asset management workflows, unlock stronger data integrity, and make ArcGIS-Maximo integration even more valuable.
At Geonexus our mission is to ensure integrity and reliability of enterprise data to support effective decision making. Our Integration Platform is an enterprise-grade integration solution that is easy to use, reliable, and includes out-of-the-box connectors for Esri® ArcGIS®, IBM® Maximo, SAP®, ABB® Ellipse, Oracle® Utilities, and other leading enterprise systems. Asset-intensive organizations across the globe use the Geonexus Integration Platform in industries including utilities, telecommunications, pipeline, transportation, and government.
We would love to show you what our Geonexus Integration Platform can do for you and your team. Submit your information, and we’ll be in touch.
