For most utilities, transitioning to the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN) represents a significant business transformation rather than a simple software upgrade. To address the human side of the UN migration and guarantee workforce adoption, utilities typically implement Organizational Change Management (OCM) support at three distinct levels: Enterprise and Leadership, Operational and Process Change, and End-user Adoption.

Level 1: Enterprise and Leadership Support

• Stakeholder Group: Executive-level project sponsors and department directors.
• Focus: Obtaining executive sponsorship and aligning the UN migration initiative with overarching corporate and operating objectives.
• Action: Building a GIS Center of Excellence, defining organizational data governance, and driving long-term adoption.

Level 2: Operational and Process Change Support

• Stakeholder Group: Mid-level managers, people managers, and operational leads.
• Focus: Mapping the transition of existing legacy GIS workflows (e.g., geometric networks) to new UN paradigms, such as branch versioning and subnetwork tracking. Providing role-based training, delivering data governance guidelines and workflow optimization to ensure a unified enterprise version of the source data.
• Action: Creating standard operating procedures and data maintenance guidelines and establishing cross-departmental user forums.

Level 3: End-user Adoption Support

• Stakeholder Group: GIS editors, office staff, and field crews.
• Focus: Assessing change impact and stakeholder readiness, concentrating on end-user learning and development associated with the new ArcGIS Pro functionality and the new data structure of the UN by ensuring hands-on capability.
• Action: Addressing organizational readiness, targeting communications throughout the project, tailoring the training plan with role-based training sessions, and providing post-go-live support for ensuring end-user adoption.

Bottom line: UN migrations can fail because leaders and teams place too much emphasis on the technical aspects of the change. For a successful UN migration, a utility must also focus on the people side—and how to ensure that each individual embraces and adopts the change that comes with this next-generation technology. OCM helps ensure user adoption and limits productivity disruptions by building awareness, aligning stakeholders, reducing resistance, managing role changes, establishing continuous communication, and delivering workflow-specific training.