Laclede Electric Cooperative has chosen Powel's iLookOut web mapping portal to provide instant access to the information it need to streamline its operations and improve customer service.
Laclede Electric Cooperative, located in Lebanon, Missouri, serves approximately 35,000 customers. Until now, when they needed data out of their GIS system, staff had to export the data and run it through a translating routine or run batch updates before they could put it in map viewing packages installed on individual client computers. iLookOut, the newest addition to Powel’s comprehensive Mobile Work Management Suite, now seamlessly integrates all that data across the enterprise, from one central Powel Work Server, which also is the hub for Laclede’s StakeOut, InfoCenter, and Work Order Management modules.
“With iLookOut our customer service representatives can respond quickly to members, dispatch crews can view mapping and system information, and our metering group can look up service locations” said Terry Rosenthal, engineering manager. “However, the number one benefit will be gaining back labor hours from not having to support separate platforms and having to update multiple systems”
As Laclede prepared to install mobile computing in its service trucks, it wanted to get away from supporting multiple applications. Using Powel’s widely deployed LookOut map viewing software for disconnected mobile users and the recently released web-based Powel iLookOut map portal for in-office users was an obvious fit. Both solutions, mobile and web, operate on the exact same data, are updated and synchronized from the same server, and are administered centrally, minimizing the effort required to implement and maintain the system.
Powel LookOut and iLookOut provide a mobile and Web-based solution that allows utilities to share information with the workforce quickly, easily, and costeffectively.
The software seamlessly bundles maps, graphics, and external data from CIS, GIS, and AMR applications all in one package. Unlike most solutions, the system natively renders the most common map-viewing files including ESRI shape files, Oracle Spatial geodatabases, AutoCAD drawings, Aerial Photos and any ODBC-compliant databases directly without needing any conversion.
Because iLookOut is connected directly to the source data, you can share “live,” customized views of service areas, utility infrastructure, customer details, AMR and call-center detected outages, GPS-driven crew locations, service requests, and other critical system data. By providing more intelligent searching capabilities than a paper map allows, everyone at the utility can search for outage locations, service work details, or a specific work order.
