Field Service Management Software Blog

Ensure Your Field Solution is Configurable for Your Utility Operations

Posted on September 26, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

Utility company field operations run on a complex maze of systems, applications, and networks that have been developed and advanced over time. Within these distributed environments, legacy systems must connect to the latest cloud, on-site, mobile devices, platforms, servers, and applications to expedite workflows and enable efficient and accurate field crew and resource deployment. This often needs to occur seamlessly across thousands of miles of physical assets within the utility’s service area. For many utility companies, the sheer complexity of infrastructure assets they must maintain presents numerous challenges, especially when new technologies are introduced into the environment. To take full advantage of all that Big Tech has to offer the industry, new software implementations must be tailored for the unique composition of each utility’s infrastructure. And no two utility company enterprises are alike. Like many utilities today, you may be looking to modernize your field operations systems in order to achieve greater integration across assets, data visibility, workflow automation, and other pivotal benefits. To ensure you are selecting a platform that can be configured for your own unique needs, investing in the right partner provider and solution is key. Here’s what you need to know.

Developing A Platform Configured for the Way You Work

While there are many infrastructure solutions for utilities on the market today, not all enable the flexibility, scale, and configurability needed to adequately serve the industry’s complex demands. When selecting a platform, it is of paramount importance to ensure that the solution you standardize on will meet your needs now and grow along with you as you add field assets, your service area population grows, and new innovations emerge designed to streamline utility field operations. First, you need a platform that enables digitization of field asset and crew data – and that serves as a point of integration across the full array of software and hardware solutions that populate your enterprise. This type of ecosystem-wide framework will ensure that you are able to leverage the investments your utility company has already made in other infrastructure assets, including feature-rich point solutions that address pressing operational challenges. Because there is an urgency about the work you perform, the solution you select should facilitate automation of routine tasks, such as data entry, that can slow field scheduling and dispatching processes and become devastating bottlenecks should an unexpected outage or unfolding emergency occur. Real-time, two-way data synchronization between all mobile devices field workers may use and both the back-end systems and cloud-hosted applications driving your enterprise is essential to have as well, as this will enable easy, fast, communication and dissemination of data to all stakeholders. This solution you choose should also work in concert with a companion scheduling engine, designed to leverage digitized field mapping data and enable the deployment of field crews and resources to wherever they need to be quickly and easily. The most sophisticated platforms on the market today present field data to all stakeholders in a single, holistic, digitized map of the service area, which automatically populates and updates as work is performed and field crews are redeployed. This real-time data sharing provides your teams with the ongoing situational awareness needed to pinpoint and troubleshoot problem areas and ensure that crew deployments are prioritized and positioned optimally, according to your service area’s needs. The interface of this dashboard is important to consider as well. The ability to dispatch and reassign crews automatically with drag-and-drop simplicity allows your team to work more collaboratively and to visually see what is happening with deployments, and where, without having to manually prepare and pore over work orders and other manual documentation.

Beyond the Platform: Why Service and Support Are Key

Because the solution you choose today will serve as your operations foundation for years to come, you need more than technology to ensure reliable energy delivery. You need ongoing access to technical experts that bring both the engineering experience and deep industry insights required to help you build out your field operations platform as your needs grow and change. This right partner should include full-featured, infrastructure-wide digitization, work scheduling, and dispatching solution you need to meet the challenges you face on a daily basis. It should also maintain a full staff of engineers, project managers, and other industry experts who work with your own internal teams from the initial design phases to tailor the features and functionality of the utility platform for your needs. For utilities, the need for configuration is most pressing when it comes to workflows and scheduling, with workflows presenting the greatest challenges. This is because each workflow that is configured can impact the performance of others that it touches across the technological continuum. To ensure that workflows are optimized and prioritized in ways that meet the needs of all stakeholders, make sure your partner developers hold pre-design workshops that bring together all who will work with the with the goal of generating a list of project deliverables for everyone involved.

Unlocking Data Visibility, Automating Workflows

To achieve the integration across the environment to enable the real-time data sharing utility companies need, the best utility field operations automation platforms should be able to directly communicate with all of your utility company’s application stack and databases – including fundamental business process applications, such as Esri, Oracle and SAP. To complement this, a queue mechanism should be able to handle long-term processing tasks, such as work order creation, which requires tracing an electrical feeder to identify all structures along a circuit in need of inspection, for example. The use of Python scripts allows both process execution and automation in configurations that are unique to each company’s needs as well. With the right tool deployed, your field operations administrators can schedule and dispatch resources with the full confidence of knowing that data is up to fully up to date. This means, for example, if someone has taken a vacation or sick day, the scheduler automatically knows this and sets schedules accordingly. And when an emergency occurs, the system should quickly deploy the right workers, with the right skillsets, who are located in proximity, to the most critical locales to get services up and running quickly.

Making the Transition

While transitioning from manual processing and reporting of field data to full digitization of these workflows can present a learning curve for employees and field crews at first, your teams will appreciate the simplicity of EpochField’s interface, and the dramatic improvements they realize in efficiency, productivity, and resource utilization when using the tool. Ultimately, having the real-time data they need right at their fingertips is transformative, enabling visibility into work being performed and the seamless collaboration between teams your utility company needs to keep service levels high for your valued customers. See how EpochField can be configured to handle the unique demands of your utility company’s field operations. Schedule a free demonstration today.

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How Utilities Can Improve Productivity and Decrease Labor Costs with Automated Scheduling Software

Posted on August 29, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility companies today, field service scheduling is one of the costliest and most complex tasks they undertake – and one of the more critically important. According to industry research published on Energy Central, field operation labor costs typically represent as much as 60% of the overall asset maintenance costs utility companies incur. For many water and gas utilities, these costs can be as high as 80% of total spend. This is because so much of the scheduling and workforce management processes are carried out manually by utility personnel. While this labor-intensive approach was sufficient for the needs of the industry years ago, today’s public is accustomed to much faster, more responsive services from the organizations that touch their lives (think Amazon and Netflix), and utilities must digitally transform their service models to keep their operations in step with what consumers today expect from them.

Achieving Workforce Efficiencies, Cost Savings

Consider that the average utility has about 500 to 800 field crew workers – without field service scheduling software, utilities typically employ one scheduling administrator for every 12 to 15 field crew members they manage. In implementing an automated scheduling software solution that is data-driven and mobile-ready, utilities can “cut ratios from one scheduling staff member per 15 field workers to one staff member per 80 in the field,” according to commentary published by consulting firm BCG. The productivity gains achieved through an advanced, automated scheduling solution allow utility companies to increase workers’ availability in the field as well – by as much as 50% and “reduce by 25% the time needed for routine jobs.” This is because scheduling and workforce automation allows utility companies to dramatically accelerate their ability to track all the moving parts involved in the scheduling and dispatching processes and complete field work much more efficiently. Digitizing and automating the scheduling solution also allows utility companies to leverage AI and machine learning technologies, which can create predictive models of their future staffing requirements based on historical data. As a result, advanced field service scheduling software can enable highly accurate, data-driven capacity planning throughout the year so utility administrators can arrange for all the field crew workers they need well in advance. And when a crisis occurs that leaves a group of customers out of service due to a storm, fire, pipeline leak or other adverse event, automated field service scheduling software can quickly process the real-time geospatial data surrounding the area and determine the best, fastest routes for field crew teams to get to impacted areas. In addition to saving valuable time for field workers and operations managers alike, an intelligent automated scheduling solution can significantly cut labor costs for utilities as a direct result of these productivity gains.

Choose the Strongest Scheduling Tool for Your Field Automation Needs

The most advanced automated work schedulers on the market today empower operations managers and dispatchers to streamline field operations resources. They offer these capabilities:

The ability to map out both scheduled work and work to be scheduled
Dynamically updating maps that display the location of all field crews and equipment
Access to field data from any connected device, from field crew smartphones to back-office servers and the cloud
Both map-centric and non-spatial presentations of work order information, with the ability to query the database
Work and work cycle scheduling functionality and dispatching features for the field – considering each worker’s personal time off and other scheduling data recorded in external systems
Automated assignment of work to users, user roles, and groups of users
Management and assignment of field equipment resources
Automatic creation of work orders based on network tracing operations
Auditing features for completed work
Creation and archiving of historical records
Reporting and analysis functionality for work performed
System and application event logging features

Learn how utility companies are using automated field service scheduling software to streamline business processes, accelerate field crew response times, and deploy the right equipment to locales in need with our latest guide, “Working Faster, Smarter: A Guide to Automated Field Crew Scheduling”.

Working Faster & Smarter: A Guide to Automated Field Crew Scheduling

Posted on August 29, 2022March 9, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility companies today, field crew scheduling is one of the costliest and most complex tasks they undertake – and one of the more critically important. According to industry research, field operation labor costs typically represent as much as 60% of the overall asset maintenance costs utility companies incur. For many water and gas utilities, these costs can be as high as 80% of total spend.

This is because so much of the scheduling and workforce management processes are carried out manually by utility personnel. While this labor-intensive approach was sufficient for the needs of the industry years ago, today’s public is accustomed to much faster, more responsive services from the organizations that touch their lives (think Amazon and Netflix), and utilities must digitally transform their service models to keep their operations in step with what consumers today expect from them.

In this report, we cover the benefits of using an automated work scheduling solution to increase utility companies’ worker efficiency and productivity.

Read the guide to learn:

How the utility industry workforce is changing, leaving companies shorthanded and missing key institutional knowledge and skills
How automated work scheduling software can increase worker productivity and efficiency, allowing them to spend more time completing work rather than on manually tracking and transferring data
How to find the right scheduling tool for your company’s field automation needs

Download the White Paper

3 Unique Utility CEO Challenges Solved by Digitizing Field Operations

Posted on August 23, 2022June 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility company CEOs, the demands of the job have never been higher. An aging workforce and staffing shortages are impacting the ability of utility companies to maintain high service levels and quickly address emergency outages when they occur.

Legislation governing utility companies continues to advance as well, imposing ever higher standards for vegetation management, environmental preservation, and other aspects of utility business practices. Rising costs to maintain and expand infrastructure assets are also impacting utility companies, a dynamic fueled by supply chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To meet these and other industry demands going forward, utility CEOs and their teams must make sound strategic decisions and technological investments now. Fortunately, new advanced digital utility tools are fast emerging that promise to help utilities better manage key aspects of their field operations and infrastructure.

So, what should utility CEOs be doing now to digitally transform operations, and how can investing in the right utility software solutions help CEOs and their teams overcome their most pressing field operations challenges?

Challenge #1: The Staffing Squeeze

With 50% of utility workers set to retire over the next decade, the industry will soon face a massive loss of field technicians, operators, engineers, managers, supervisors, and administrative employees. In addition to leaving them shorthanded, this loss of experience and institutional knowledge will create room for operational errors which can put field workers in danger.

To mitigate the impact of a shrinking workforce, utility CEOs must focus on supplementing experienced workers with intelligent technologies and hiring or training staff to utilize these tools that:

Digitize workforce management to reduce human error and accelerate productivity
Enable real-time tracking and tracing of assets and conditions out in the field
Integrate systems and applications across the environment for better communication and faster data processing

Solutions that support field-level digitization are continually being updated and expanded upon to meet the most current needs of the utility industry. Consider platforms that are planning to enable intelligent technologies, such as AR-enabled collaboration solutions which capture critical knowledge from video calls and other sources for future reference by inexperienced new hires entering the industry. They should also be preparing to leverage AI and machine learning to help guide critical operational decisions, such as where to deploy field crews first when disasters strike.

Challenge #2: Regulatory Headwinds

The regulatory landscape governing utility companies is changing as well, and CEOs are faced with increasing requirements for tracking and tracing the location and condition of their infrastructure assets.

For example, consider ASTM F2897, a new regulation requiring gas companies to track the location and condition of assets at a much more granular level. New mandates designed to preserve the environment and help prevent wildfires continue to be enacted as well, calling for greater, more detailed tracking of power grids, pipelines, and other infrastructure assets – with fines imposed when service outages occur.

Broad access to field crew data and the ability to digitally analyze this data can help utility companies prove that their operations are in full compliance with industry laws. The digital workforce management platform selected should also allow utility companies to:

Leverage geospatial technology to track and trace assets in great detail
Display data in visual, map-centric dashboards, making it easier and faster to identify risks
Automate business processes to expedite workflows and reduce service downtime

With the ability to capture and record pivotal field data in real time, utility companies are much better prepared to demonstrate compliance with the high regulatory standards being set for them.

Challenge #3: Spiraling Infrastructure Costs

Utility CEOs are also grappling with rising operational costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related supply chain challenges. As the costs to repair, replace, and upgrade infrastructure assets rise, utility company CEOs must advance their utility’s digital tools and enact new business practices to reduce their labor needs and associated costs.

Implementing a single, enterprise-wide solution can help eliminate the workflow bottlenecks that can tie up personnel, delay field deployments, and result in compounded, costlier damages when emergencies occur.

Ideally, the platform selected should automate these and other essential business processes including:

Scheduling field personnel
Tracking work in progress
Assessing performance
Managing assets
Identifying opportunities for improvement

With an enterprise-grade digital workforce management platform implemented, utilities can achieve the operational efficiencies needed to reduce headcount which in turn, helps them offset the increasing expenses imposed by rising equipment costs and other supply chain challenges.

Choosing a Provider

For utility CEOs, an investment in a digital workforce management platform should be made with an eye toward the future. In addition to enabling design flexibility and scale, the platform should integrate well across a utility company’s existing infrastructure. The platform selected should also be backed by an organization with a proven track record for overcoming industry-specific challenges.

For more than 15 years, Epoch Solutions Group has helped utility companies manage the full complexities of their field operations by leveraging advanced geospatial and workflow automation technologies. See how EpochField can transform operations for your utility company. Schedule a demo with one of our geospatial technology experts today.

Why It’s Critical for Gas Companies to Digitally Manage Assets

Posted on August 16, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

For gas companies today, the regulatory landscape is rapidly evolving. New laws, such as ASTM F2897, continue to raise the standards for how gas utility companies must manage and track their assets in the field.

To maintain compliance with ASTM F2897 and other emerging industry regulations, gas companies are required to ensure that their infrastructure assets are performing safely, reliably, and sustainably – and to report the condition of field assets at a more granular level than ever before. Attributes ranging from the exact location of an asset to its material composition, size, manufacturer, model, lot number, production date, and facility, and maintenance history must be digitally recorded into gas company databases, reported to regulators, and updated as conditions in the field change over time.

Digitally Transforming the Industry

While in the past gas company asset data has been collected by field crews primarily through manual processes or hybrid models involving both manual documentation and digital apps, the need for gas companies to digitize their asset management processes has never been greater.

To help gas utility companies capture the essential asset data they need to comply with regulations and achieve the operating performance they are seeking, a new generation of geospatial technologies is revolutionizing the industry. Aided by intelligent workflow automation and highly visual map-centric interfaces, these solutions are empowering back-office teams and field crews with the tools they need to more effectively communicate, collaborate, and share real-time geospatial data.

While there are many digital asset management solutions available to gas utility companies today, not all offer the full range of capabilities they need. To maintain assets optimally, keep pace with increasing consumer energy demands, mitigate risks, and stay in compliance, investing in an enterprise-grade geospatial solution is a best practice every gas company should follow. Serving as a point of integration across field asset management systems and applications, an advanced platform can deliver deep visibility into the condition of assets and real-time situational awareness that gas companies need to achieve these and other goals:

More comprehensive and proactive management of their infrastructure
Better troubleshooting of problems before they escalate
The ability to ensure the health and safety of field workers
Improvement in response times when service outages occur
Complete, up-to-date asset management records
Reduction in both operational costs and regulatory risks

Here’s What to Look for in a Solution

An ideal digital asset management solution should be built around geospatial technology that allows gas utility companies to both track and trace assets and integrate that data into all related operational and business process workflows.

The platform you select should be scalable, configurable, and enterprise-wide, and it should allow you to import geospatial data regarding field assets into interactive digital maps that allow your team to drill down and view pertinent details about infrastructure assets.

The platform should also automatically sync data between mobile apps, back-office servers, and applications deployed in the cloud to ensure that all stakeholders can see the same up-to-date data and efficiently plan surveillance, maintenance, and repair work accordingly. It should enable fast, easy workflow creation and management as well, without requiring additional coding, and feature automated work scheduling engines and distribution modules for mapped asset data.

With the right digital asset management technology in place, gas companies can realize these and other benefits:

Real-time data sharing across systems, applications, locales, and personnel
The ability to analyze data for strategic assessments, predictive modeling, and more informed decisions on field deployments
Automated workflows to accelerate productivity and reduce human errors
Faster responses to outages for more reliable service uptime and better customer experiences

Why Choose EpochField

With EpochField, gas utility companies can gain the visibility into the condition of field assets and the real-time situational awareness they need to understand and record high volumes of asset data, optimize the performance of assets, ensure safe, reliable energy delivery, and meet the regulatory mandates governing the industry. Highly configurable to meet each gas company’s unique operational requirements, EpochField offers these and other advanced features:

Mobile offline collection and viewing of asset data for field personnel who are often working in remote locales, without an Internet connection
High-performance digital maps that display geospatial data holistically and dynamically update as new data is processed by the system
Configurable work order forms that are produced automatically based on field mapping data
The ability to customize schedules, work orders, and other operations documentation for the specific project or situation at hand

Schedule an EpochField demonstration today.

Leverage Utility Field Operations Digitization to Enhance Customer Service

Posted on June 23, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

The economy is digitally transforming, and utility companies are taking note. In fact, according to IDC, by 2023 digitally transformed organizations will contribute to more than half of the global gross domestic product. And the investments made by public and private entities to digitize operations are clearly paying off – so much that organizations the world over are doubling down on the strategy.

Consider industry research showing that 35% of business executives claim digital transformation helps them “better meet customer expectations,” 40% say it helps improve their firm’s operational efficiency, and “38% of executives plan to invest more in technology to make it their competitive advantage.”

To keep pace with innovation and deliver the kind of customer experiences expected today, utility companies are modernizing their infrastructure, automating and digitizing workforce management processes to improve employee productivity and operational efficiencies.

More than Cost Savings

While digital transformation strategies can yield significant time and cost savings for utilities, eliminating manual touchpoints from gas and electric customer service processes is a delicate balancing act. Even though modern consumers value – and expect – the easy, fast access to information they get using your website, social media outlets, chatbots, and other self-service resources, there are many instances in which only a live agent can meet a customer’s service needs.

Though the quality of the customer service you provide isn’t typically associated with your field operations, having an enterprise-grade, digitized workforce management platform in place can prove invaluable during the most critical, time-sensitive customer service interactions. Without immediate digital access to remote field service teams and infrastructure data, your agents may be ill-equipped to respond to customer inquiries during times of need – such as when an outage disrupts their daily lives or ability to conduct business.

Investing in the right utility digital tools can transform service interactions into positive customer experiences that resolve issues faster and instill consumer confidence in your brand. The most advanced solutions on the market today empower live agents and other internal staff members with these and other benefits:

Instantaneous exchange of data across systems, applications, locales, and personnel
The ability to distill data into strategic insights for more informed decisions on field deployments and other aspects of your operations
Automated workflows that expedite processes and reduce human errors
Faster, more accurate responses to service inquiries, for more positive customer experiences and better consumer sentiment overall

Beyond Technology

While the breadth of functionality achieved through digitization can prove transformative to your utility company’s operations and service levels, as with any organization sweeping changes to your infrastructure should be supported by a comprehensive change management strategy. Ultimately, staff members need to be well trained on the technologies you are introducing and comfortable assuming any new tasks and responsibilities your digital transformation initiative requires of them.

When evaluating field operation solutions, ensure possible partners provide the training and support resources utility companies need to educate both internal staff members and critical field operations teams on our industry-leading technologies. Implementation teams should be part of the process from the design and development phases of a project through the platform’s roll-out and beyond.

Why Choose EpochField

Epoch Solutions Group’s EpochField Service Platform transforms customer experiences by laying the foundation for business process automation, enterprise-wide data access, and real-time communication between field operations and internal teams, including vitally important customer service agents.

Based on the industry’s most advanced geospatial and workflow management technologies, EpochField enables seamless integration across your utility’s digital infrastructure and automation of processes ranging from data collection and reporting to field operation scheduling and work order management.

With EpochField, utility companies achieve deep visibility into what is happening throughout the regions and communities they serve and can therefore communicate up-to-date information to customers and other stakeholders in real time. Broad data access also helps internal teams quickly prioritize field operation team deployments to optimize service levels and minimize downtime when adverse events occur.

Highly configurable to meet an individual utility company’s unique infrastructure and service requirements, EpochField offers a breadth of essential features, including:

Mobile offline viewing for field personnel who are often working in remote locales
High-performance maps that dynamically update as new data is fed into the system
Configurable work order forms that can be customized for the customer service request at hand

With a track record of success extending back decades, we bring to clients a deep understanding of the technological, operational, and customer service challenges facing utility companies today – and proven industry best practices you can easily adopt now to ensure your investments in digitization deliver on their promise for years to come.

How to Use Geospatial Technology to Automate and Streamline Your Utility Field Operations

Posted on June 17, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

For many utility companies, data collection is largely a manual process, or one that involves a mix of technology and manual record keeping. Data must be collected, digitized, processed, and kept up to date when on-site infrastructure and assets change. Field workers are often also deployed to remote areas with no online connectivity, making it difficult to access and enter the data required to do their jobs.

In-office personnel also face a variety of challenges around field workforce management – namely, the sheer volume of data being collected from a variety of sources. Data recorded in legacy, on-site systems is also challenging to disseminate to teams of field workers, particularly when it is siloed in disparate computer systems and applications and needed in real time.

So, what is the solution? With the geographic reach and service demands of utility companies continuing to expand in both size and complexity, the need to digitally streamline operations is more pressing than ever. The right geospatial technology can help companies automate and streamline the management of their geospatial data.

Key advantages of geospatial technologies include:

Integration of data into operational and business workflow processes to influence decisions on resource allocation and expediting the deployment and management of field crews.
Ability to display physical assets digitally in interactive maps that allow utility personnel to drill down to pertinent details about the assets and their surrounding terrain.
Fast, easy workflow creation and management, efficient work scheduling engines, and data synchronization modules for asset map data.
Integration with enterprise GIS and business applications used by employees and other stakeholders, including Oracle, IBM Maximo, and SAP.

View the recording of our recent webinar, “Uncover Opportunities to Automate & Streamline Field Operations Through Geospatial Innovation”, to learn more about geospatial technologies, as well as the features to look for when selection the right solution for your company.

View the Webinar Recording

Digitizing Gas Utility Workforce Management Enhances Community Safety

Posted on June 10, 2022February 28, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

Industry technology is quickly transforming, making it essential for natural gas utility companies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operational workflows. One way to accomplish this is to automate and digitize the data collection process. By digitizing workforce management, natural gas companies eliminate manual touchpoints that can compromise not only the quality and accuracy of the data but also community safety.

Tracking and traceability automation solutions enhance safety measures by allowing natural gas companies to adhere to safety and environmental regulations that keep communities safe by preventing gas line-related disasters and that reduce the gas industry’s environmental footprint. These digital solutions are revolutionizing the natural gas industry, bringing deep, real-time visibility into the locations, conditions, and technical attributes of natural gas assets, information that can be easily accessed and utilized by mobile field workers who are tasked with installing, inspecting, and repairing equipment.

The ideal tracking and tracing automation can support workflow processes allowing field workers to have remote access to asset map data and be able to work more efficiently in the field. When field workers can visually represent asset data, it increases the effectiveness and accuracy of both small, individual crews and entire services territories. Below are a few important features you want to look for when selecting your workflow automation.

A web-based platform to serve as a point of integration enterprise-wide for administration personnel, supervisors, and dispatchers
A full-featured mobile application allowing workers to conduct installation, inspections, and other routine maintenance tasks with all the data and functionality at their fingertips – on their smartphone or computing device of choice
Forms that can be easily configured
Offline functionality and high-accuracy GNSS receiver integration for easy mobile access to satellite data
A scheduling and dispatch engine that leverages real-time insights to expedite and simplify mission-critical workforce deployments
Mobile workforce management features that allow managers back at the office to dynamically track the location of field crews and quickly divert them to new locations as needed
Work-order management functions for easy digital planning, tracking, and management of work orders
Enterprise level asset management tools to coordinate essential operational processes and enable deep, ongoing visibility into the condition of remote natural gas infrastructure.

Download our latest guide, “Automating Tracking and Traceability Processes: Minimizing Human Error for Better Field Outcomes” to discover how digital tracking and traceability tools can help you lay the foundation for a future defined by greater uptime, innovation, and better protection from the damaging effects of environmental factors.

Automating Tracking and Traceability Processes: Minimizing Human Error for Better Field Outcomes

Posted on June 10, 2022March 9, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

With industry technology digitally transforming so quickly, the pressure is on for natural gas companies to embrace new tracking and traceability tools as they are brought to market and to modernize their systems, applications, and organizations.

In this report, we explore how digital tracking and traceability tools are revolutionizing the natural gas industry and providing for easier, safer, and more efficient field operations.

Read the guide to learn:

The latest regulatory requirements affecting the natural gas industry, such as ASTM F2897
Why it’s important to make the investment now in automated tracking and traceability technology
Key features to look for when selecting a digitized workforce management solution

Download the White Paper

Modernizing Your Approach to Vegetation Management

Posted on April 26, 2022May 17, 2024 by EpochTester

The safety and reliability of power line systems is essential to consumers and businesses alike, and in the era of climate change, vegetation management has never been more critical.

When vegetation around the power grid is left unchecked, it can interfere with power line systems, with catastrophic results. In fact, vegetation grow-in and fall-in remain the most dominant causes of power outages today. Even more concerning is the devastating impact unmanaged vegetation can have when power line systems are impacted by extreme weather events, such as windstorms, which can bring lines down and send dangerous sparks into the surrounding terrain.

While in 2021, the financial impact of Western states wildfires reached an alarming $10.9 billion, the human costs of wildfires fueled by downed lines are simply beyond measure. Consider, for example, California’s 2018 Camp Fire, caused by extreme heat and wind conditions that damaged power lines and ultimately ignited one of the worst wildfires in our nation’s history. The Camp Fire consumed a full 153,335 acres in just two weeks, took the lives of 85 people, and destroyed 30,000 homes. Moving at a pace of 80 football fields per minute at its peak, this out-of-control blaze ravaged the entire town of Paradise in four hours.

To help mitigate the effects of wildfires and power outages, utility companies today are making vegetation management a top priority, seeking new tools and technologies to aid in the fight.

Why Digitization Is the Answer

Inspections and forecasting of vegetation are key mitigators of vegetation management and drivers of operational priorities and budgets for utility transmission and distribution departments. To effectively reduce the risks of vegetation fall-in and grow-in around power supply systems, utility companies need deep ongoing visibility into exactly where vegetation growth is posing the greatest threats.

To gain that level of visibility, utility companies conduct routine line inspections and gather vegetation data from a variety of different sources as well, such as aerial imagery and LiDAR, which is typically employed to capture data from above, using helicopters, airplanes, and drones. Because all this data is collected via disparate manual and digital processes in a range of different technological formats, structuring, synthesizing, and processing it presents challenges.

The vast amount of data available to utility companies today also presents technological challenges – along with opportunities. For example, rapid deployment of new satellites is increasing the geographic data available to the industry exponentially, information that can be used to dynamically track the state of vegetation around the power grid. However, processing all this data in an efficient manner takes immense computing power, and utility companies are often restrained by existing legacy infrastructure that lacks the high-performance computing required to analyze such volumes of data.

Utility companies also often suffer from an inability to convert raw data into the standardized formats required to leverage new advanced technologies available to them, such as AI and machine learning. Going forward, utilities must modernize their approach to vegetation management by advancing their infrastructure to keep pace with innovation, digitizing and standardizing the data they aggregate, and automating workflows to streamline their operations and meet the high vegetation management standards the industry has set.

Selecting the Right Technology

As a first step, utility companies should invest in a single, enterprise-wide platform that serves as both a central repository for field data and point of integration across systems and applications. Having the right digitization platform in place will ensure universal data access by stakeholders and ultimately help streamline workforce deployment workflows. Integration across the environment will help eliminate workflow bottlenecks and enable support for innovative new technologies as they emerge. The most sophisticated solutions in the industry today are web-based, offer expansive support for mobile devices deployed in field operations, and are built to scale.

The ideal digitization platform should also capture and standardize data from a breadth of resources, including drones, satellites, mobile devices, and manual documentation. Support for new, emerging industry AI and machine learning solutions is essential to have as well.

Optimally, the platform should also automate business processes from end to end – including scheduling field personnel, tracking work in progress, assessing performance, managing assets, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

Meeting the Challenge with EpochField

While there are many digitization solutions on the market today, few offer the functionality, flexibility, and scale needed to meet the vegetation management demands of the utility industry.

A web-based, enterprise-wide solution, the EpochField workflow automation and management platform is tailored for utility companies and can be configured to an organization’s specific needs. EpochField comes with full-featured modules for field workflow creation and management, work order and workforce scheduling, and asset map data distribution to the field, and is built for seamless integration across the infrastructure, from field mobile devices to on-premise servers and cloud-based applications. As the use of emerging technologies becomes more widespread, EpochField will continue to adapt to these and other data collection sources to provide utilities with the critical data needed for ongoing decision making.

As a foundation for network and asset workflows, EpochField offers features like offline viewing, high-performance maps, and configurable work order forms, allowing utility personnel to easily view their assets on a map-centric interface, wherever they are located – in the office or in the field.

As a result, utility companies can meet the complex challenge of vegetation management head on, dramatically increasing system uptime while preserving lives, property, and the environment surrounding the power grid.

Click here to schedule a demo today.

Digitization in Mobile Workforce Management: Overcoming 5 Barriers in Field Operations

Posted on April 11, 2022March 9, 2023 by Epoch Solutions Group

The pandemic added a level of urgency to digitization in utilities unlike anything the industry has ever seen. And yet, for many companies, the ongoing work towards digital transformation has been anything but smooth.

In this report, we cover some of the barriers we’ve seen firsthand as companies follow the path to streamlining and simplifying end-to-end mobile workforce management.

Read the guide to learn:

How digitization is reshaping field operations and bridging the gap between field and office workflows
The top 5 obstacles companies face when implementing technologies meant to promote digital ways of working
How to overcome these challenges with a phased, achievable roadmap to digitization

Download the White Paper

A Checklist for Field Operation Digitization

Posted on April 11, 2022February 28, 2023 by EpochTester

Utilities and telecommunications companies have been under pressure to digitize in order to remain competitive and support the mobile workforce for many years. For too long, the norm for field operations has revolved around paper-based processes, physical maps, and duplicate data views. Of course, the pandemic has forced many companies to re-evaluate their technology landscape and re-examine the impact of technology-driven solutions on a remote workforce. But the years following COVID-19 have proven that nearly anything can be streamlined and digitized with the proper technologies in place.

The efficiency gains and cost savings to be had from digitization are too great to ignore. This is especially true for field operations. In order to overcome barriers – both internal and external – it’s critical that organizations have a comprehensive project plan that addresses the varied elements needed for successful digitization. Preparing for digital transition of field operations is a process and one that should have a set of measurable milestones and results from the outset. Executives also need to engage with their teams to understand the challenges fieldworkers face and work with them to find solutions that make sense for both sides.

If you’re looking to transform your field operations into the next phase of digital execution, here’s a checklist your team can use to ensure the transition to digital management is smooth and results in more effective, efficient operations:

Understand the business case for upgrading to digital tools. Lay out the short-and long-term goals and align digitization plans to them to ensure priority work is transformed first.
Assess your current state and identify areas of improvement. Conduct a thorough audit to identify the most pressing challenges that digitization will address and develop a roadmap to the ideal operational state.
Develop a plan to implement digitization in a way that makes sense for your organization. Form a task force for the transition and include team staff members who will be working directly within the digital systems; comprehensive involvement gets everyone engaged and focused on the same goals from the start.
Train and equip your field workers with the tools they need to be successful. Identifying early adopters to champion training, celebrating learning steps, and acknowledging change management wins will help keep teams motivated.
Monitor and optimize your digitization efforts over time. Schedule regular evaluations aligned to planning, implementation, and execution milestones to course-correct or leverage successes throughout the system.
Work with an implementation partner that can help you assess your organization’s needs and ensure the best roadmap with the least interruption. Make sure your partner offers configurable solutions that solve the unique challenges your teams face every day, from the back office to the frontline. Also, ensure you’re getting increased visibility and productivity in every part of the process.

Each of these steps is important in achieving success with digitization in field operations, but it’s also important to keep in mind that every organization is different and will have its own unique challenges and needs.

You know it’s time to update your process, but where do you start? Learn more about how to get your operations ready – download our latest guide: Digitization in Mobile Workforce Management: Overcoming 5 Barriers in Field Operations now.

Top 4 Considerations for Finding the Right Technology Partner for Utilities Companies

Posted on April 7, 2022February 28, 2023 by EpochTester

Utilities companies must improve their flexibility and resilience by enabling new technologies and solutions in an era defined by digital transformation. By embracing a new technology partner, organizations can drive new business models, move beyond traditional and conservative processes and operations, and enhance their workforce capabilities.

Utilities companies that embrace digital strategies and make bold commitments to digital transformation will drive industry-wide innovation. Exploring new technology partnerships helps businesses achieve their digital transformation goals. Choosing the right technology partner is key to a successful transformation and helps organizations:

Overcome industry-specific challenges and those unique to your individual business
Set up new operations and processes to run more efficiently
Easily integrate technologies with new and existing systems
Leverage a repeatable and lasting solution

Technology manages the complexities resulting from digital innovation so that businesses can continue to create solutions that positively impact people’s lives. Utilities companies must transition to digital technologies in order to be competitive, offer enhanced customer experiences, and survive and thrive in an age driven by technology.

1. What to Look for in the Right Technology Partner

Technology partnerships help organizations redefine and enable new business strategies. They seamlessly connect business and IT environments, so businesses can generate value through technology adoption and enable their workforce to focus on innovation. A technology partner should understand the inherent challenges of the utilities industry and how their solution can seamlessly fit into a company’s digital transformation strategy.

2. Understanding Unique Industry Challenges

Great technology partners understand unique utilities industry challenges, like environmental issues, economic competitiveness, and security. The right technology partner will help a business expand their IT capabilities, handling important technology updates and maintenance, so that existing IT and technology teams can focus on more crucial work and innovative projects, which can also help with employee retention.

Many energy companies have been around a long time, with legacy systems and processes that have been SOP for years. As they modernize their infrastructure and further enable data and analytics-based decision making, the need could arise to embrace new cloud capabilities like the ones offered by companies like Fortinet and firms alike. Transitioning to modern technology should be seamless and frictionless, and technology partners should offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions so that companies can:

Easily implement new technologies that are continuously updated over time
Facilitate a quick migration process compared to upgrading hardware
Scale architectures up or down as needed

Organizations like Epoch Solutions Group offer EpochField as a service that integrates with multiple back office IT systems, such as GIS and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). This enables them to deliver new services and help companies overcome the limitations of on-premise deployments.

3. The Need for Configurability and Customization

Technology partners must be able to configure their technology to integrate with an organization’s existing systems, processes, and workflows. New solutions should be set up seamlessly and shouldn’t require a talent overhaul to operate. These solutions should be repeatable and serve as a foundation for future growth and opportunity.

Technology partners should also help business and IT teams expand how they use technology in their everyday workflows. It’s about providing a solution that helps organizations reduce the complexities of work via enhanced workflow processes.

Organizations are preparing for the future by shifting to new digital business models so they can unlock significant value. This is not simply an engineering-specific transformation. Rather it requires a holistic change to the business and operating model across culture, supply chains, products, and more. Configurable solutions from technology partners take into consideration the unique needs of every organization so that teams across the business and IT can benefit and operate in their individual capacities.

4. System Integration

A lack of system integration can lead to short-term challenges and long-term operational inefficiencies. Creating a sustainable business foundation that will support future technology additions and integrations should be enabled by a technology partnership.

Digital transformation for organizations is a continuous pursuit driven by the impacts of artificial intelligence, data availability, and analytics. As organizations build their technology architecture to enable data-centric decisions, the insights need to be accessible across teams and business areas to maximize the value and effectiveness of these strategies.

System integration helps people use their data quickly and efficiently, solving data management challenges that typically impede growth and opportunity. Organizations will have clarity and visibility into their operations and data that helps them to drive new products, services, and solutions.

Choose Epoch Solutions Group as a Technology Partner

Epoch Solutions Group understands the critical capabilities necessary to make digital transformation successful. They include:

Overcoming industry-specific challenges and those unique to your individual business
Setting up new operations and processes to run more efficiently
Integrating technologies with new and existing systems
Leveraging a repeatable and lasting solution

Contact a consultant to learn how Epoch Solutions Group can help your organization achieve its digital transformation goals now and in the future. Click here to schedule a demo today.

How Digital Innovation Helps Utility Companies Quickly Get Things Back Up and Running After a Storm

Posted on March 29, 2022February 28, 2023 by EpochTester

One of the worst winter storms swept through Texas in recorded history during 2021, causing power outages to millions of people and businesses. According to McKinsey and Company, this catastrophic event led to Governor Abbot issuing a disaster declaration in 254 counties. 2020 and 2021 were two years that had the most named storms in history, with 30 and 27 named storms respectively.

From hurricanes, to devastating winter storms like those in Texas and increased weather activity throughout the country, the impacts of storms on energy infrastructures is far reaching. Managing these systems and monitoring and responding to a power crisis in real-time is highly complex. Utilities companies need to implement a flexible digital infrastructure to meet the many challenges they encounter when providing consistent and active services, and to be prepared to get services back up and running quickly in the case of a storm emergency.

Responding to New Energy Landscapes

The effects of climate change are significantly impacting the utilities industry. Frequent and severe weather conditions have pushed infrastructure capabilities to their limits, leading to power outages, lower efficiency, and higher costs.

Water, electric, and environmental regulatory environments are evolving. As a result, energy companies must reimagine maintenance and inspection goals and approach new solutions that give them greater control of their assets.

Implementing weather-resistant, mobile electrical structures like these modular e-houses that can accommodate almost any power structure could be one of the many solutions. The advantages provided by these e-houses, such as withstanding the elements while ensuring resistance to fire, explosions, and galvanic corrosion, seem to be in line with the requirements for outage prevention due to storms and other disasters. With that said, technological solutions can also come into the picture and help utilities provide immediate and timely services during emergencies.

Climate Change, Regulations, and Consumers

Amidst new climate and regulatory landscapes, utilities companies are faced with new consumer demands and behaviors that are changing alongside the digital world, like smart home environments and smartphone applications. Consumers are driven by personalized experiences that give them more control and data at their fingertips. Energy companies must deliver these experiences to keep pace with modern consumer needs for transparency and personalization.

Utilities companies should respond to climate change, regulatory environments, and consumer demands and generate value using new, innovative solutions that:

Optimize operations
Overcome the limitations of legacy systems
Improve the customer experience

A utility company needs the right digital capabilities and solutions that help them more efficiently manage their operations while equipping the workforce with new digital tools that improve workflow processes and collaboration. Energy companies need real-time access to the right data to assess changing environments and instantaneously react and respond accordingly.

Utilities and the Impacts of Digital Technology

When the Texas power crisis occurred, harsh weather conditions were devastating. In the event that power outages occur, power grids and power lines are damaged, utilities companies require the capabilities to respond and restore power quickly.

Energy companies need customizable solutions that put their customers first and equip their employees with new capabilities to deliver and enhance services in a modern digital world. They must reimagine how they approach numerous business functions like asset management, workforce deployment, field workforce management, and vegetation management.

Assessing damage and quickly deploying field service crews helps energy companies restore power rapidly to their customers. EpochField, a solution from Epoch Solutions Group, enhances data collection workflows with tools that enable strategic planning, field data collection, and real-time analysis. It integrates operates with existing systems including outage management (OMS), work management (WMS), geographic information (GIS), and customer relationship management (CRM).

Innovative digital solutions like these improve damage assessment back-office functions. Teams utilize dashboards to provide a better view of to view outages, crew locations and work locations on a spatial map with integrated GPS tracking. Systems receive notifications when outages occur, and field crews are quickly deployed.

Also, scheduling optimization tools help utilities companies efficiently assemble and deploy large groups of field crews more accurately and efficiently. Field crews also use their mobile devices for online or offline work orders, sending and receiving information from the back office, electronically syncing data with the back-office enterprise systems. Any system user can create work order forms, document inspections, streamline maintenance, and demonstrate compliance to regulators.

Organizations need to prepare for today and tomorrow. Digital solutions from Epoch Solutions Group enhance utilities companies’ agility, resilience, and flexibility. Epoch Solutions Group drives innovation and opportunity with a technology platform that helps organizations respond to digital transformation, enhance operational efficiency, and overcome the challenges resulting from climate change, regulatory environments, and shifting consumer behaviors.

Digitize Your Utilities Operations

Schedule a demo today and discover how Epoch Solutions Group can help your energy company prepare for storm outages, the impacts of climate change, new regulatory landscapes, and changing consumer behaviors.

EpochField 5.0.3 Release for Mobile, Work Scheduler, and Web API

Posted on September 29, 2021February 28, 2023 by EpochTester

The products team at Epoch Solutions Group has been busy working on a few new enhancements and updates to EpochField for iOS, Android, and Windows. EpochField 5.0.3 can be found in the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft app store today.

We are introducing a number of new features and enhancements in the EpochField Mobile 5.0.3, EpochField Work Scheduler 5.0.3 and Web API Release. Read on for the summary release notes below.

EpochField Mobile

Lassoing multiple assets for a bulk update fixes
Fix for multiple ad hoc task types with the same geometry
Click Integration Tool enhancements and fixes
Backwards compatibility fix for a vital Click Adapter
Fix fo group layer visibility does not honor the individual layer configurations in the APRX

Known Issues:

Android – Due to a Xamarin Essentials bug reported with Android 11, users will need to set their Android device location permissions manually. To do so, go to the “App Location Permissions” section of your device’s “Settings” app and choose “Allow Always” or “Allow Only While Using App” for the EpochField app.

Copying Text does not work with APRX documents published to ArcGIS Server 10.7.1

EpochField Work Scheduler

Groups should be able to be configured so that they can see all groups/content or only their group/content.
Groups should only be able to Delete or Disable workers, crews, and equipment which they have created in Resource Management.
“Managed By” drop down list should only include Groups that have the setting “Only Show Managed Work in Gantt”.
Expected user visibility for the work order scheduling resource dropdown list is not honored.
When utilizing the EF Mobile calendar view, users shouldn’t be able to edit/delete work orders – only view them
Actual Start and Actual Finish Dates for completed WOs are not editable
Service Point not showing for the Stand by Calendar fix
Planned work orders not showing up in Gantt Chart if no work has yet been assigned to workers.
Initial Dates in Work Scheduler are not being populated or displayed fix

Known Issues:

None

EpochField Web API

Cannot find stored procedure error when using SQLServer fix

Known Issues:

None