How Users Influence Utility GIS Product Development

Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure

In any industry, it’s important for professionals to have peer-based organizations that promote the exchange of new ideas, best practices; it’s how industries build a standardize body of knowledge, evolve the profession and influence change. The world of technology and software is no different.

At Intergraph, we believe in providing a forum for our customers to collaborate and share their ideas with each other – and with us. These user groups are essential to how we further develop our products and solutions to meet their needs, as well as, create new solutions and products.

In this podcast, we talk to Chris Bodley, service delivery manager with Anglian Water in the U.K. and president of Intergraph’s G/Technology Special Interest Group (GSIG). Listen to hear how GSIG is leading the way and influencing how Intergraph develops new spatial data technology and solutions..

Podcast Script:

Laura Beth: Thank you for joining us for an Intergraph SG&I podcast. In today’s podcast, we are talking with Chris Bodley, who is the service delivery manager with Anglian Water in the UK. Chris is also the President of the G/Technology Special Interest Group or GSIG. Chris, thank you for joining us.

Chis: My pleasure.

Laura Beth: Today we are talking with Chris about the importance of the GSIG user group. This group exists to provide communication and collaboration with G/Technology users and Intergraph. Chris, let’s get right to it. Tell me how the GSIG group was formed and for what purpose?

Chris: The GSIG, as you already said, stands for G/Technology Special Interest Group. It was basically formed to give users of G/Technology systems and Intergraph a forum to communicate and collaborate with each other. It’s essentially a user group, and we meet three or four times a year. We have a face-to-face meeting and meetings in between. And we share information about the systems that we use, and how we use them. And that’s really the kind of main purpose. We’re a formal organization as well, so we have a committee and volunteers that help run the GSIG along with Intergraph’s help. We have four people who are elected from the user group members to help run it, and I’m currently the President. So, it was essentially brought together to allow users of the G/Technology systems to talk to each other about how they use the systems and the best steps for the system. We also talk to Intergraph about what priorities we have as users of the system for future product development.

Laura Beth: So you kind of touched on it. Why is a group like this important, especially being a part of a user group?

Chris: I think the GSIG really has two primary important purposes for people to be involved. One is, it’s really an opportunity for us as a group for users of the systems to be able to talk to Intergraph about what our priorities are. So, what’s currently causing our organizations product pains, and what opportunities are there for within the products for us to get benefits. We’re able to work with Intergraph to help prioritize future product development. So, provide some kind of feedback as users to Intergraph about where we want to see future product development. It’s really important for us as users to have that kind of forum.

The other real reason why I think it’s important to have this sort of group is to talk to each other. As user of the systems we can share knowledge, best practices, ideas, and our own experiences of using the system. It’s pretty much a network of help amongst various users and companies, helping each other get the best out of the system. And I think that’s two reasons why this group is really important.

Laura Beth: So, what have you found are the greatest benefits that you’ve received, especially pertaining to Anglian Water, from being a part of the GSIG user group?

Chris: In so many ways, we’ve found benefits. As a couple of examples, one being we had a particular issue with our G/Mobile system. More specifically, our operational workforce unit – in terms of how the updates to the G/Mobile client on our operational users Toughbook devices - weren’t getting updated in an efficient way. We’ve been able to work with Intergraph through the GSIG and help stir future product development, so we could improve that area. In a future release we’re going to have this year, there are improvements around the subset update. And that’s been really though working with Intergraph through the GSIG as well as other users of the G/Mobile system as well.

Last year at the GSIG meeting, the face-to-face meeting that we have at the Hexagon conference, we had a really good session where people were collectively talking about their experiences upgrading to version 10 of G/Technology. And it was really lots of different organizations that had upgraded; sharing their experiences such as what went well and what went not so well. And for Anglian Water, we’re in a bit of an upgrade this year. I was able to take a lot of information that those organizations were sharing and weave it into our project. And it’s really been a benefit. So, those are good examples, I think, of how you can help in terms of the future product development, but also just sharing information with each other.

Laura Beth: And so that kind of leads into my next question, what results have you seen made to the G/Technology product line from comments, suggestions or discussions that have been raised from the GSIG meetings?

Chris: I’ve already given you an example of something around G/Mobile, but we’ve been working with Intergraph through the last couple of years, running surveys across all of our GSIG members about what areas they would like to see development around the products and really drilling in to voting on different priorities and into the future Intergraph product line. So, we’re seeing over the year that we’re getting engaged in the GSIG. I can’t give any specifics around that, but we are every year. We’re asked for our opinions and priorities, and it’s an ongoing process..

Laura Beth: Great, and I understand every year there is an annual face-to-face meeting at Hexagon’s international conference. What goes on at this meeting?

Chris: Yes, so our face-to-face is really our formal meeting that we have every year. We do have sort of WebEx meetings in between the face-to-face meetings. But the face-to-face is really the most important one, where we all get together in a room at once. We spend the whole day together, and we have quite an extended agenda. We usually catch-up on what we’ve done and achieved as a group for the year. Then, we discuss what our priorities are for the upcoming year. The agenda itself is really built by us, so it’s based on what our members want to talk about or particular topics that they want presented. We usually get a product roadmap presentation from Intergraph which is really, really useful. Last year we had a Q&A panel from a number of the Intergraph executives, and that was really useful. It’s a real good chance for us to actually get face-to-face with some of the senior people at Intergraph, and basically ask them any questions we want about the products. And we’re going to run that again this year; it was a real success last year.

We also have some formalities to do. We are run as a committee, so each year we have to elect people to the committee to help out and run the organization. The GSIG doesn’t run by itself, so we have four posts on our sub-management committee: a president, a vice president a secretary and sergeant in arms. And they’re all volunteer based, so we normally ask for people to come forward and help us. And we will hold our elections at the face-to-face meetings.

We also run sub-committees as well. The G/Technology product set is quite vast. So, during one meeting it’s not always possible to go over every single product or system. As a result, we have these sub committees, which focus on a particular area. For instance, we had a G/Mobile sub-committee, and they can take a life of their own outside the GSIG. They run as a kind of a meeting group dedicated to that particular topic area. And they’re run again by people in the GSIG, so that really gives people the opportunity to drill into a particular area in a lot more detail. We have those meetings taking place during the face-to-face, usually in the afternoon. And then they also go on and meet throughout the year as well.

Laura Beth: Ok, how can someone join this group and participate in this annual meeting?

Chris: It’s really easy to join the group. All you have to do it contact one of the GSIG committee members. I know all we require is a company profile to be completed, and that just gives us some basic information about your organization and what systems you use. If you’re company is already registered, then you can register that easy as well. That’s a pretty straightforward process.

In terms of joining the annual meeting, when you register for the Hexagon conference, there’s an option within that to join the GSIG meeting. So again, it’s really that easy to register for the meeting as well.

Laura Beth: Well is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like to share with our audience?

Chris: I guess from my own experience, I just really encourage people to join the GSIG, and come and join us for the meeting as well. I’ve been involved for three years and I think it’s a really useful group and really important. There aren’t many occasions, I’ve run a number of systems for Anglian Water, where we get an opportunity to talk on this level with the company providing the system and the users. So, I think it’s a really good group. I think we’ve achieved a lot in the time I’ve been involved. And I think it’s a great thing to get involved with and very rewarding as well.

Laura Beth: Chris, we appreciate your time and thank you for being our guest. You can learn more about Intergraph SG&I solutions by visiting our website at Intergraph.com/sgi. Also to learn more about the GSIG group and how to join, you can visit their LinkedIn profile page.

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