Linear asset industries are responsible for infrastructure that spans thousands of kilometers across cities, regions, and rural areas. These networks are foundational to everyday life: delivering electricity, supplying gas and water, connecting communities with fiber, and moving people and goods efficiently.
Managing these vast and distributed networks is not simple. Organizations must coordinate a complex asset lifecycle:
- Designing and expanding the network into new territories
- Overseeing construction with external contractors
- Connecting new customers to the grid
- Managing emergencies and performing preventative maintenance
- Keeping the GIS map continuously updated in real time
Yet too often, these processes are slowed down by multiple and disconnected systems, siloed teams, and manual workflows. Field crews are dispatched with outdated or inaccurate information. Asset changes take weeks or months to appear in central systems due to poor integration and usability. GIS data is fragmented across platforms, making it impossible to gain a unified and real-time view of the network.
Electric utilities need days to reconcile field updates after a storm. Gas companies struggled with delayed leak resolution due to disconnected GIS and FSM systems. Telecom contractors very often re-excavate a fiber line that had already been moved, because the update never reached the GIS.
The result? Costly delays, execution errors, and limited visibility between the field and the control room. Key updates are lost. Frustrated customers and regulators. This lack of real-time accuracy compromises decision-making, operational safety, and service reliability, making it impossible to gain a unified and real-time view of the network.
