Join Esri for a webinar series focused on helping utilities, water and telecom's to overcome the challenges surrounding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Join one or all of three session: 4/14, 4/21, 4/28. Register today!
Apr 28, 2020
10:00 AM MST
Free Webinar Series
COVID-19 Business Continuity for Utilities, Water and Telecom
Join one or all of three session: 4/14, 4/21, 4/28 |Â Register today!
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I worked for a power company for 20 years. I held all kinds of positions from running supply chain to engineering to operations. I even managed the merger of two utilities. I’ve implemented a new SCADA system and of course a GIS. I lived through deregulation. I’ve seen it all.
Until now.
One of the guiding principles I used whenever I started a new program, GIS included was to do a survey of what other utilities had done. I never really wanted to be the first to do anything brand new. Sure, we did some pilots for some innovated things. But generally, we liked to make sure things worked somewhere else before.Â
Responding to the challenges of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) does not give utilities the luxury of figuring out what worked before. It’s all new. The best we can do is to rely on really good data, technology and science. We are not talking about how to deploy drones or some brand-new power flow algorithm or how best to capture data from sychrophasers. We are talking about survival here. About keeping the business running as best as we can given the enormous challenges to the workforce, facilities and assets.  It’s about business continuity. Pure and simple.
To quote one of my favorite thought leaders, Simon Sinek, “more information is always better than less.” That’s where GIS can play such a critical role. Sure, utilities have been using GIS for decades. But mostly for documenting what they know – the location of their assets. GIS is much more. It does collect all kinds of data. But it also has tremendous analytics. It can see trends and patterns that you can’t see with reports and data tables. It also can act like a sort of social media using maps. It gives people access to the data and the insights. Now that decision makers are working from their basements, their kitchens or their bedrooms alone, sometimes quarantined. More than ever, they need to communicate, collaborate and coordinate activities.
COVID-19 is challenging utilities in nearly every way. From staffing to facilities management to revenue. They need solutions to quickly maintain business continuity.  These unprecedented times means rethinking operating modes. They require gathering new data, digitizing remote workforces and gaining insights across the entire organization.
My employer Esri is holding a 3-part webinar series over the next several weeks. Each webinar will only be 30 minutes. It won’t cover the best practices of what utilities have done during a pandemic over the last several years! This never happened before. It will focus on how utilities can overcome the challenges of COVID-19 in the best way possible given what we know now.
The first webinar will cover the ArcGIS COVID-19 business continuity solution. The next on digitizing and managing field operations, and the third on analytics for business intelligence. Â Webinar 1 is COVID-19 Solution on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 starting at 9:00AM Pacific Time. It will illustrate two solutions - The Coronavirus Business Continuity Solution: This is a collection of maps and apps to maintain business operations and share authoritative information with customers and stakeholders. The second is called The Hub template. It illustrates how to rapidly build a website that provides authoritative information to customers to share the critical steps you are taking to continue business operations with internal stakeholders.
The second webinar is about how the impacts from COVID-19 has rapidly forced utilities and telecoms to re-access the business operating modes. Any process that is not digitized creates breaks in the information flow. And bottlenecks in daily operations. Organizations need to know who can work and where employees are working to make business continuity decisions. They need to know what work is required, what work is completed, and they need to know in real time. This webinar covers essential mobility applications to maintain business continuity using Tracker for ArcGIS, Survey 123 and ArcGIS Dashboards
The third webinar to be held Tuesday, April 28, 2020 starting at 9:00A Pacific will cover business intelligence in the era of COVID-19.  Governments, health care agencies and first responders are collecting many datasets on COVID-19. They include testing facilities, essential suppliers and open businesses. This data is available in ArcGIS. It can provide insight to business continuity decisions. The idea is to show how to implement detailed analytical capabilities to create simple and easy to build dashboards for both internal and external stakeholders.
So no, there are no historic practices for us to follow. The best we can do is to gather as much data as possible, to disseminate that data to everyone who matters and to use science and technology to guide us through these very murky waters.
Sign up for the webinar series here.