Volume 26 • No 04 • 2003
ISSN 0742-468X • Since 1978
On-line Since 2000

GMCS Market Study Excerpts
Part 3 (of 3)

Editor’s Note: In the last 2 issues I provided excerpts from the Executive Summary of the definitive study of GIS & Mobile Computing Solutions (GMCS) for the North American Electric Utility Marketplace. The study was conducted by InfoNetrix (www.InfoNetrix.com), a market research and consulting firm with offices in New Orleans and Sacramento. Here we present part three of the three–part series. In this issue we cover the sixth and seventh signs of the “Seven Signs of GMCS Market Evolution,” with the remainder covered in the next issue.

Although the GMCS market will experience a wide range of pervasive changes during the 2002-2006 forecast period as the result of many factors on several different levels, some factors will have a more significant impact on how the GMCS market evolves than others. The study refers to these factors as The Seven Signs of Market Evolution.

The Seven Signs of GMCS market evolution are listed below with a brief synopsis of each to be presented in serial form over a three –issue period. (More comprehensive analyses, as well as pertinent details about how each of these will impact the GMCS market are provided in Section 3: Principal Market Drivers, Issues & Trends.) The signs are:

1. Regulatory Policy & Governance
2. Economics & Investment
3. Technology, Integration & Standardization
4. Data Integrity & System Security
5. Web & Wireless Solutions
6. Enterprise Applications
7. Customer Satisfaction & Service

Enterprise Applications

Following decades of intensive development, pilot testing, deployment and support, GIS is now considered accepted technology. No longer can major procurement decisions be delayed or postponed indefinitely by repeatedly waiting for the final "proven" version. Just as relational databases are essential for storing and accessing conventional information, GIS is essential for the storage and retrieval of spatial information. Also, now that proven GIS platforms are available, utilities are beginning to harness the power of spatial technology for other enterprise applications as well.

In the near future, GMCS-based work management, outage management and trouble call management systems will likely become as common (and necessary) as accounting systems. Moreover, at some point along the way, the focus of these systems will turn from an application focus into a more generic information platform focus — that is, the engine that drives other enterprise systems and applications.

Building the initial GMCS was risky, lengthy and expensive. Now, utility executives expect this investment to pay off. Maps themselves do not contribute to the bottom line. It is what you can do with an intelligent map that excites utilities. That is one reason that work order management outage management, and mobile systems are hot items. They feed off the GMCS and deliver productivity to the field and to the customer.

In the mainframe days there was a point when just about any key note speaker at an IT conference had a slide that showed a computer on an island, and claimed that “data processing is not an island.” Invariably, this would lead to a discussion of building a bridge to the rest of the corporation.

Guess what? These days, that slide is showing up at GIS conferences, and the IT guru’s declare that GIS is not an island and a bridge must be built to the enterprise.

Hollow rhetoric or not, it is the prevailing trend: GIS must — and will — become part of the enterprise systems culture.

Customer Satisfaction & Service

Prior to deregulation, the definitions of customer service and customer satisfaction were, at best, ambiguous as to what they really meant for the customer. Indeed, the idea that these terms carry an implied obligation on the part of the provider — in this case, the utility — to offer some type of remedy when customer expectations were not being met was often lacking in substance when the time to deliver satisfaction was at hand. Having operated under these loose definitions for nearly a century, most utility customers had relatively little understanding or appreciation of what deregulation might portend regarding their ability to enjoy a greater level of service and satisfaction. For most, competition in the utility market was — and continues to be — perceived almost exclusively as a pricing matter. That is, in the minds of many utility customers, competition equals lower electricity prices.

The fact is, the introduction of competition brings market balance and equilibrium; not necessarily lower prices. Yet, part of that equation also involves bringing supplier products and services into line with user (i.e., customer) expectations. As the restructuring process continues and markets are opened to competition, increasing numbers of utility customers are gaining new insights about the role that deregulation plays in achieving improved levels of customer service and satisfaction — though not always in the ways they imagined.

The introduction of several new performance measurement standards such as the system and customer average interruption duration and frequency — commonly referred to as SAIDI, CAIDI, SAIFI and CAIFI Ð as well as other uniform measures of utility performance are being widely instituted by utilities throughout the U.S. and Canada. The benefits being realized through the implementation of these measures are several.

Besides providing a very specific and uniform methodology for evaluating utility performance, they have also translated into a much higher degree of accountability within the utilities themselves with executive compensation now often tied in part to how well the utility scores on these performance measures. An immediate result of this new awareness and emphasis has been a drastic increase in the number of outage management systems (OMS) and work management systems (WMS) within the past two years. Although OMS/WMS were not specific targets of this study, a significant level of additional investment in mainly distribution level automation is expected as this trend continues. The focus in the next five years for GMCS will be to provide better utilization of, and better data to, field crews to keep customer service levels high.

Find out more

To learn more about the GMCS Market Report, and how you can obtain the complete study, visit InfoNetrix (www.InfoNetrix.com) Read previous excerpts: Part 1 • Part 2

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