At nearly 119 square miles, Henderson is the second-largest city in Nevada and is home to over 330,000 people.
For many years, the City of Henderson Department of Utility Services (aka Henderson Utilities) was operating without any kind of integration – their Esri ArcGIS and IBM Maximo data was kept separate. But, as their technical debt steadily increased, Henderson Utilities realized they needed an integration solution that would allow them to synchronize data between the two systems. Instead of using a productized/out-of-the-box integration platform, the city decided to try a custom-code solution.
Henderson Utilities spent several years developing Python-scripted solutions to bridge the gaps between their Maximo and ArcGIS data. The custom scripts brought even more issues to the city’s operations; they were difficult to schedule, took a long time to run, required database inactivity for the duration of the run, and were costly to maintain. Amidst all the troubles, Henderson Utilities’ custom integration solution still wasn’t doing a perfect job synchronizing their data. The city still had to sort through duplicate and orphaned data and had to reload records due to errors. In addition to those issues, Henderson Utilities’ technical debt continued growing behind the scenes.
Henderson Utilities’ technical debt manifested itself in several costly, time-consuming ways, most of which were linked to the tightly coupled model the city used for its custom integration solution. Henderson Utilities experienced problems with verifying data/asset load numbers, data availability for their field/maintenance staff, constant needs for upgrades and testing, the lack of comprehensive reporting, and no ability to link orphaned records. The developers were doing all they could to try and make the integration run smoothly, but their efforts weren’t enough to keep Henderson Utilities’ technical debt from growing even further.
Realizing their technical debt was a huge problem and that they needed a more reliable integration solution, Henderson Utilities adopted the Geonexus Integration Platform (GIP). The implementation took roughly eight months, down significantly from the multi-year timeline it took Henderson Utilities to create their custom-code solution, and finished on time and on budget. After implementing GIP, Henderson Utilities was able to populate hundreds of thousands of null values and link nearly a million assets between their ArcGIS and Maximo systems.
Henderson Utilities’ goals for their new integration were:
GIP delivered everything Henderson Utilities was looking for in an integration solution. The city can now synchronize data bidirectionally between ArcGIS and Maximo, see reports of data exchanges and errors, and load assets significantly faster than their custom-code solution allowed. Henderson Utilities now has more power over their integration too; thanks to GIP’s configuration options, the city can customize their integration to fit their needs perfectly. Plus, Henderson Utilities employees are spending much less time troubleshooting problems with their integration, freeing them up to complete other tasks while GIP handles the rest.
Henderson Utilities’ technical debt was eliminated in many ways, the first of which being the elimination of their custom-code integration solution. Now, the city doesn’t have to deal with fixing problems with Python scripts, performing upgrades, and testing to make sure everything is working properly. Instead, GIP allows them to:
Now that Henderson Utilities is happy with their data integration solution, the city has realized the true scope of its return on investment. They’re saving time on updates, which now take half as long as they did while using the custom-code solution. Henderson Utilities is also fulfilling their goal of using GIP’s nightly data reports, which eliminates the need to manually search for duplicate or orphaned data.
Perhaps most importantly, the city is now avoiding unnecessary work thanks to GIP. Henderson Utilities estimates nearly 8000 service requests could have been eliminated over a six-year period if they hadn’t adopted a custom-code solution. Now that they’re using GIP, Henderson Utilities can dedicate valuable resources to the parts of their operations that need them most.
Geonexus’ platform was built with business logic in mind and allows utilities to connect systems like ArcGIS, Maximo, SAP, and more. The Geonexus Integration Platform opens the door to new possibilities for data integration and asset management, so schedule a demo today and learn how Geonexus can help make the most of your data.
