It can be difficult to manage both internal and external resources, especially with unexpected weather and other major events. You have to keep track of personnel, equipment, tasks, and both regular maintenance and surprise repairs as they come in. Whether it’s using a legacy system or paper and clipboard, each company has developed their own way of managing resources and work.
Many operations store all their assets at a central site. This makes sense, as it’s easy to think having everything in one place makes it simpler to keep track of what you currently have and what’s being used. Similarly, you may have a single system for each aspect of an operation. For instance, one to track trucks, one to keep track of employee hours, and one to map out routes.
As utilities continue to evolve, it is becoming more and more evident that the industry’s digital systems must be integrated. Work can be done faster with the right people when you can quickly view data from current active field crews alongside all available data from across your entire organization. Utilities can easily see trends and predictive analysis that could save teams hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. All that’s needed is a good API and platform integration.
Tackling the Challenge with ARCOS
ARCOS’s utility resource management software can bridge new and legacy systems together, optimizing every bit of your operation. ARCOS can tie your existing systems right into our user-friendly interface, allowing you to combine multiple tracking methods into one.
This allows quicker, more accurate reporting that takes all your resources into account. By having solid tracking, you can plan ahead, for blue skies or grey. You’ll be able to see in real-time what’s working and what’s not, and where more assistance is needed. It lets you take a wide view or a narrow one, depending on your needs in the moment, and switch back and forth effortlessly.
Looking to ARCOS Mobile Workbench
Imagine GIS, Outage, and Work Management Systems all working together and utilizing the same data. A work order can come in and be shared with both the utility work management system and dispatchers, using ARCOS to assemble the crew. The extension of capabilities allows companies the ability to manage both people and work with a heightened knowledge of where crews are, how long they will be on site, and their estimated time to get to another job.
ARCOS Mobile Workbench combined with the ARCOS API can have systems cross-communicating and sharing what they know, adding more value and life to your existing legacy systems. It also provides instant communication between the back office and the field without the need to drive back and forth with paper packets.
Be Everywhere at Once
With all systems connected electronically, you don’t need to have everyone in the same place, supporting remote work and flexibility for your team. The right people will be on the right work at the right time, and supervisors can keep track of resources from anywhere. Multiple staging sites makes for more efficient deployment, bringing resources closer to where they’re needed and requiring less travel time. Integrating mobile apps also lets field workers stay in constant contact.
Through a full platform integration, the central staging area is digital. Whether you have a main office or employees working from home, they’ll have the same access to information. Branches don’t have to update one another because everyone communicates back through a single source of truth. Managers at every level can make informed decisions about the entire operation holistically.
In the digital age, there are better, efficient ways to help you get work done faster while streamlining flexible remote work processes. Through API integration, different systems can talk to one another, bringing all parts of your operation into a single platform that you can view through one lens. This gives better visibility for staff in the back office to see what’s going on in the field, and allows coordination of different types of resources all in one system. And embracing an integration project is easier than you think.
Find out more about the ARCOS API by contacting one of our experts today.
