Addressing All Users During an Electric UN Transition

Being an electric utility that has adopted Esri for your GIS need, you are likely considering what a transition to the Utility Network (UN) will require. It is important to consider how any internal transition will impact the GIS users across the organization.  GIS users in electric utilities are often de-centralized i.e., spread out into various departments such as Engineering, Dispatch and Operations. A project plan for transitioning to the UN should consider the needs of all GIS users.

Many utilities may be trying to plan for this technology evolution within their company without considering the number of resources needed to succeed in all departments.  Of most concern are those users that use GIS as a tool for their job e.g., Engineers/Designers or Dispatchers.  The concern here is greater because these users need to continue to perform and produce day-to-day work while also taking on a new technology transition.  If GIS user needs are not addressed at the outset of the project, frustrations and lack of adoption of the technology may occur.

Implementation of the UN requires a deep dive and hard look at your GIS data and how it is used.  In order to make proper project decisions in an informed way, information needs to be gathered on what is working now and what isn’t, what is needed to do good work, and what will impact business processes.  This is a heavy technological lift for most organizations.  This gathering of information begins to put strain on GIS users from the beginning.  And once the UN is implemented, it is the organization’s employees that devote significant time learning  new ways of doing their work, re-working business processes, and inter-departmental collaborating to close projects (e.g., as-builts) with new tools.  Including change management personnel in the UN transition project will provide focus on these users’ needs.

To have success with the people who do the work, a change management plan should be considered a critical piece of the UN transition to ensure users’ needs are met before and after the technology implementation.  A change management plan will facilitate the communication between the technological implementation of the project and the employees, who are considered the end-users, to ensure successful adoption and project overall success.

A change management plan seeks to understand the impact of the change, then align resources and support staff to help them understand the technology implementation plan.  It includes descriptions of the change expected with the UN transition and aligns those changes to business goals.  A change management plan would also include the impacts of those effects, a communication strategy, and direction for providing end-user training and support.  Continuing to manage and track the progress of the change management plan is also important.

For more information on change management see SSP’s Chris Spencer’s blog on Organizational Change Management (OCM) here.