Posted by Christopher Kelly
With even a quick glance at the annual report from most utilities, you’re likely to likely to find terms like “responsible business,” “effective governance,” and, of course, “innovation and technology.” Despite this, companies continue to invest in vegetation management solutions that serve a functional silo even when their business strategies suggest that there should be greater technology integration and adoption across business functions.
Many decision makers today isolate their biggest pain points and begin their investment in vegetation management technology to overcome these specific challenges. A prime example is the automation of cyclical preventative maintenance trimming. This is a great place to start—especially if there’s an understanding organization-wide of the importance of investing in a flexible, scalable solution that enables the utility to address incremental opportunities longer term without limitations.
In today’s fast-moving environment, gone are the days of comparing the features and functions of specific technologies like field management tools. Instead, savvy investors are now beginning with a broader vantage point of enterprise integration even when it comes to vegetation management. Why? Because vegetation management touches many facets of the daily life at your utility operation and exchanging data among vegetation management and other IT systems, departments and processes is today’s mark of maturity.
The following is not a comprehensive list but over the next several weeks we are planning to cover three areas to consider with respect to an integrated vegetation management solution. And we’ll be asking the questions, how well your utility is:
1. Handling customer requests?
2. Processing administrative information among your vegetation management contractors and your AP/AR teams? Or your foresters?
3. Managing post-outage investigations?
Stay tuned to learn why enterprise integration is the new face of vegetation management technology.