In a recent poll of IBM Maximo and GIS users, 48% of respondents cited “Technical Challenges” as their biggest obstacle when planning and executing a GIS and Maximo Integration.
Integrating any two systems is difficult. Integrating complex systems such as IBM Maximo and Esri ArcGIS can be extremely frustrating. Organizations often spend large portions of their limited budgets and deploy massive development projects to connect these systems, but the outcomes regularly fail to meet basic integration requirements. To create an integration that meets the business needs, professionals must first understand the potential failure points they may encounter along the project path.
When it comes to GIS and Maximo integration, there are three types of challenges. Organizational challenges, aligning business processes, and technical challenges. In this post, we take a deeper look at the technical challenges of integrating IBM Maximo and GIS systems and offer some ideas for paving a path to integration success.
There are key structural differences between Maximo and ArcGIS that complicate integration. In Maximo, you have one table for assets (maybe two with locations) and in GIS you can have numerous tables for assets. This creates a complication for synchronizing simple data because you have a one-to-many relationship. The more layers you have, the more difficult configuration you can expect.
Often, these technical challenges persist even after a solution for integration has been put in place. If you have implemented a tightly coupled integration, version lock is a common technical issue. Version lock means that you are unable to upgrade GIS or Maximo without breaking your integration because of the dependencies that have been put in place. Therefore, missing out on any new functionality in either system.
To overcome the technical challenges of GIS and Maximo integration, it is vital to establish a foundation. What is the problem you are trying to solve? How does your data align? What are the editing workflows? Answering these questions will allow you to establish data governance for rules for how synchronization is going to occur. For example, maybe you want to establish a rule to create an asset in GIS and update the asset and location in Maximo. Once created, you want Maximo to become the owner so you can create work against that asset and update specifications from Maximo. Once that foundation is in place, you can start building a reliable integration.
The good news is you are not alone in this effort. There are partners and solutions out there that can help relieve the technical difficulties of GIS and Maximo integration. ActiveG and Geonexus offer fully supported, no-code/low code solutions that provide loosely coupled data synchronization, enabling users to maintain their GIS and Maximo synchronization with fewer technical issues.
Watch the recent webinar below or reach out to our team to learn more about how the solutions offered by ActiveG and Geonexus can help your organization overcome GIS and Maximo integration technical challenges.
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