Willis Group Holdings plc is a leading global insurance broker with 400 offices in 120 countries. The firm delivers a full range of professional insurance, reinsurance, risk management, financial consulting, human resource and actuarial services to corporations, public entities and institutions around the world.

Risk is an inevitable factor in any enterprise. Yet, for large multi-national organisations and businesses with global supply chains, understanding and managing that risk can be hugely complicated. Risk managers need to be able to assess hundreds of factors, ranging from the political stability of a country to the probability of an earthquake – at dozens of international locations – and then act upon them.

Willis supplies its corporate clients with a wealth of information and analysis to help them identify and manage global risks, including (but not limited to) climatic disasters, volcanic activity and political unrest. Until recently, this information was provided in PDF-format reports; however, clients sometimes found it difficult to aggregate this knowledge and analyse all the information at their disposal.

“There was a pressing need within our business to improve the service we offered to our clients by developing a smarter way to deliver all the intellectual capital and knowledge held within our global analytics department,” says Nick Charteris, Engineering Team Manager, Construction, Property & Casualty, Willis.

Willis decided to harness Geographic Information System (GIS) technology within a solution that would allow its clients to review asset information and the risks associated with each asset. Interactive global maps and spatial analysis are an integral part of the overall platform. Named Atlas, the solution was developed in-house by Willis, with support from Esri UK and Esri Inc, using Esri’s ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online software.

For each new client, Willis loads location-based data specific to the client’s own business into Atlas and integrates it with its own vast reserves of risk management information and analytical power. Clients can therefore search for, view and evaluate both internal and external information at the same time, via a single easy-to-use application. Only named users, with discrete login details, can access a client’s data, so sensitive information is kept secure.

Using Atlas, Willis’ clients can gain a far deeper understanding of their global risk profile, not only at their own business sites, but at partner and supplier sites and strategic locations throughout their entire supply chains. “Our clients can investigate their supply chains visually on a map to get new insight into risks that they might not have been aware of before,” says Nigel Davis, Executive Director Platforms, Willis.

With improved awareness of risk, Willis’ clients can then implement more pro-active measures to protect their businesses. Charteris explains, “With a better understanding of potential threats across multiple geographies, our clients can manage risk more effectively and take steps to minimise potential losses.”

For example, Atlas allows clients to monitor the path of an active tropical storm and to identify property and business operations that might be impacted. Clients can then respond quickly to put measures in place to protect these assets in order to reduce the financial losses that might occur through property damage and business disruption.

As a web-based solution, Atlas can be accessed by clients outside their offices, using their home computers, laptops or tablets. Consequently, managers who are travelling to overseas factories or visiting potential new suppliers can access risk data on demand to help make strategic decisions. Davis says, “Risk data can be used to inform day-to-day business operations rather than just annual reporting and that helps to reduce risk.”

In addition, use of the Atlas solution could potentially pave the way for clients to obtain more cost-effective insurance premiums. When they renew their corporate insurance, they will be able to provide accurate location-specific information which can be used to create a comprehensive risk assessment. “Atlas can help clients become more attractive propositions in the insurance market,” says Charteris. “With accurate risk profiles, we can help broker their risk to insurers, and drive better value for them.”

An added advantage of the solution is that it provides organisations with better control over who has access to risk management information. It is no longer possible for employees to forward PDF documents to other (internal or external) recipients by email; instead only authorised users can log into Atlas to view and analyse potentially sensitive risk data.

As well as benefiting clients, Atlas has also created efficiencies within Willis’ own business. The solution is integrated into core workflows and provides a central repository for data. Charteris says: “Atlas is becoming a single source of truth for our risk analytics intelligence.”

University College London (UCL) is renowned worldwide for its GIS research, both within the Geography department and CASA (the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis). UCL was the first university in the UK to have a lecturer in Geography and examining the spatial world has been in UCL’s DNA for quite some time. In 1833, the newly-founded University of London (now UCL), appointed Captain Alexander Maconochie, Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, as its first professor of geography. In more modern times, UCL has played an instrumental role in the development of GIS. Roger Tomlinson, often considered the ‘father’ of GIS, wrote what is arguably the first GIS PhD thesis during his time at UCL.

With a research mission based around a series of ‘Grand Challenges’, UCL’s GIS research work is helping solve problems found in the areas of crime, environmental change, transport, public health and epidemiology.

“In the past, socioeconomic and geo demographic classifications have provided fixed indicators of the social, economic and demographic characteristics of people living within an area. Often regarded as static reports, the output was achieved using fixed data. Today, UCL is using Esri software to develop new real-time, dynamic GIS techniques, which will deliver a lot more value, to users,” concludes Paul Longley, Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London.

Real-time, bespoke, geo-demographic GIS applications are the next challenge being tackled by the team at UCL and the recent launch of ArcGIS.com will help them become a reality.

Recent achievements include the creation of applications which process incredibly large datasets and also perform analysis fast enough for the application to be of value to the online user. One groundbreaking project examines the spatial distribution of families via their surnames.

Using a database spanning 300 million people in 26 countries, advanced GIS techniques are being applied to examine how value can be derived from such data. Surnames, for example, provide a useful source of information for the analysis of population structure, migrations, genetic relationships and levels of cultural diffusion and interaction between communities.

“The spatial distribution of a surname can tell you a lot about the kind of people who have that name”, explained James Cheshire PhD student and author “We’ve started to extract different conclusions on the spatial history of surnames by applying GIS in new ways, which is useful for understanding issues such as population genetics, or tracing historical migration into Britain during the last 1,000 years or so.”

ArcGIS has helped UCL overcome a range of challenges throughout the course of the project, including dealing with a large International database containing many different data formats, projections and levels of granularity.

When the research is completed, it could easily support historical and genealogical and chromosome research, the examination of settlement trends of ethnic groups, family migration history and even product marketing.

In addition, surnames have been used to develop Onomap classification, (www.onomap. org), where users can take a forename and surname and pinpoint a person’s geographic origins. This can help breakdown the often simple of crude ethnicity categories in a census, to gain a deeper understanding of a population’s structure at neighbourhood scale.

ArcGIS.com is an Esri website for sharing GIS content and building communities. Visitors can access a number of free, ready-to-use base maps for projects and applications, including community maps that have been built with data from organisations around the world; or easily create maps and mash-ups quickly using a JavaScript Web Mapping application. Server based GIS development has taken a big step forward as users can upload complex GIS applications and maps, accessible for anyone to use. It overcomes the issue of working with multiple data formats in a distributed environment and allows users to create mash-ups with Esri created base maps.

ScottishPower supplies electricity and gas to over five million homes and businesses. It is part of Iberdrola, one of Europe’s largest electricity groups. The company is a veteran of tightly integrated office and mobile geographic information systems (GIS). Guy Jefferson, Customer & Performance Director says “GIS plays a particularly important role in helping the company to manage and maintain its assets. These include underground cables and pipes, overhead lines, poles, pylons and substations, all of which are dispersed across a UK network that is more than 112,000 km long.”

ScottishPower recognised that GIS was one of its most critical business systems, and one that added value. However, its systems were out-of-date, inadequately supported and, in some cases, could not be upgraded to support new hardware or use better data, and this was contributing to higher licence costs.

“Our assets are widespread, and we don’t have as many staff with local knowledge of the network as we did ten years ago”, explains Dave Clarke, Spatial and Mobile Delivery Manager. “GIS is therefore essential for helping both our office-based employees and our field-based engineers to find our assets and understand how they are connected.”

ScottishPower decided to upgrade its entire environment and create a next generation GIS, starting with mobile applications.

To deliver the industry-specific mobile applications required by ScottishPower, Esri UK teamed up with Sigma Seven, specialists in mobile solutions for the utility and network asset management industries. GeoField, its field mapping and data management solution, is powered by Esri’s ArcEngine mapping technology and was already used by ScottishPower.

The partners worked with ScottishPower to assess requirements and configure, test and deploy a range of new and upgraded mobile GIS applications. Esri mapping technology was used as a single common GIS engine underlying the mobile solutions, enabling field hardware, such as tablet PCs, to be upgraded.

“One of our key requirements was to first integrate the GeoField solution with our legacy GIS so we were able to get up and running with improved mobile GIS applications very quickly, with minimal investment in application development”, explains Clarke. “It also needed to seamlessly migrate to the planned Esri office systems for our enterprise solution.”

The benefits are evident in many parts of the business. Most significantly, they are helping ScottishPower respond promptly and efficiently to reported power outages. All the 350 first response staff, known as DARTS (Direct Action Response Teams), have new tablet PCs with access to maps of all assets, across the entire network. The maps are stored on hard-drives to ensure access even in remote areas and during storms.

“A big driver in our business is the need to ensure the environment our staff work in is as safe as possible”, says Clarke. “Our mobile GIS applications are crucial for helping DARTS to respond quickly, effectively and safely to customer issues. The upgraded maps will undoubtedly provide accuracy and clarity in our records that give confidence to staff working with our assets.”

Workflows are more efficient. For example, a new application for managing overhead power line inspections is fully integrated with the asset management system. Head office staff plan the inspections, and schedules are automatically sent to inspectors via a standard form. Inspectors select a job on their tablet PC, and get a map of the area, highlighting the poles and lines that need inspecting. When they mark the inspection as done, the pole or line changes colour on the map.

Tree surveyors are another group to benefit from new mobile mapping capabilities, using them to identify trees that need trimming, create schedules for clearance and to manage felling permissions with land owners.

The deployment of upgraded mobile GIS has taken place on a large scale. The system was delivered on time, within budget and quickly gained acceptance with and positive feedback from the 600 individual field operators initially using it.

Building on this success, ScottishPower is confident about fully integrating its office and mobile GIS platforms to enable key business processes to be further streamlined. “This will give us a fully connected model of our entire network”, explains Clarke. “When faults occur, we will then be able to trace them all the way through the network to see where they originate and which properties are affected… We expect to be able to make a lot of efficiency gains from this extension to our core GIS.”

National Grid plc is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. It delivers energy to millions of homes and businesses across Great Britain.

For National Grid, accurately pinpointing people, properties and infrastructure is essential in order to run a safe network and deliver responsive customer service. But within its UK Gas Distribution business, maintaining reliable location information was challenging. The staff – from engineers, to customer service operatives, to asset managers – relied on a variety of systems to do their job. More challenging still, each system used different sources of address data, referenced and searched in different ways.

This gave rise to a number of problems. “Inaccuracies would often creep in across different systems,” says John Turner, Project Manager for National Grid. “Some addresses might be spelled incorrectly or recorded differently in different databases. This added time and risk to our work, which – especially for our emergency response activities – we simply couldn’t afford.”

To enhance safety, increase efficiency and boost regulatory performance, National Grid decided to tackle this problem as part of its ambitious Gas Distribution Transformation Programme. This saw the company reduce its business systems from forty to just four – one of which was a Geographic Information System (GIS) from Esri UK.

Built into this system was Esri UK’s innovative LocatorHub solution.

LocatorHub is a powerful location management solution. It gives utilities centralised access to any datasets, from public data such as Ordnance Survey, to their own sets of addresses, roads, network assets and vulnerable customers. This creates a ‘single point of truth’ for all location information in the business.

Importantly, the system constantly cleanses address data, correcting inaccuracies and removing duplicates. It gives every location a set of coordinates, for pinpoint accuracy. And it’s very easy to use; users can search for information using xy coordinates, standard address formats, asset addresses and includes fuzzy matching.

LocatorHub can also be embedded into applications. At National Grid, it is built into the Esri desktop and integrated into all key business applications – from the CRM system to its SAP plant maintenance application – putting reliable location information at the heart of business processes.

As soon as LocatorHub was populated, John and his team cleansed their data to ensure all records were accurate. “We verified 22 million addresses provided by Xoserve to be able to link vulnerable customer and meter information with our LocatorHub addresses. We also cleaned our asset location data, and gave xy coordinates to everything in the system, creating a highly accurate, centralised set of data for use across the business.”

National Grid has completed 1.5m jobs in the last 12 months using LocatorHub to identify properties or gas sites, and verified more than 60,000 gas site locations.

The business now has one point of reference for all activities at a site. “That includes all jobs we’ve carried out, and a full customer history. We can even centrally log details of all people related to a particular site, from landowners to occupiers and their agents.” explains John.

“This helps our engineers deliver better service. And it’s easier to get the business intelligence to make more informed strategic decisions.”

LocatorHub also helps National Grid respond quickly to emergency call-outs. As the organisation responsible for the UK-wide National Gas Emergency Service, this is business-critical. “We are targeted by Ofgem to respond to uncontrolled leaks within 1 hour,” explains John. “This can be challenging, especially when people report smelling gas at places without an address, such as a field or a canal bank.

“LocatorHub lets our call centre team position a map to mark the xy coordinates of a potential leak. This can save our engineers minutes or even hours in locating the leak, which is vital for protecting the public.”

When it comes to incident investigation, LocatorHub offers impressive time savings. Investigation requires a lot of information – from a site’s repair history, to recent activities at nearby premises. “Previously, collating information about an incident could take several weeks. But with LocatorHub, we can identify premise and job history in less than a day,” John confirms.

Of course, address data is always changing. But now that LocatorHub is in place, National Grid has a way to manage this efficiently. “If a site doesn’t exist in our systems – perhaps it’s a new-build – LocatorHub lets us add a temporary location, so we can continue with our work until we validate it,” he says.

John believes LocatorHub will be a key part of National Grid operations for many years to come. “LocatorHub enables us to manage the address lifecycle, from plot all the way through to demolition. That’s absolutely fundamental to the work we do, but we would never be able to handle it on our own. The Esri system is a core part of our business.”

EE is the UK’s largest communications company, providing mobile and fixed-broadband communications services to more than 27 million customers through the Orange and T-Mobile brands. The company employs more than 15,000 people and operates over 720 retail stores across the UK.

EE knows the importance of listening to what its customers want in order to deliver the best services. But following the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, the new business found it a challenge to get insight into its customer data. “We had an awful lot of information about our subscribers and their mobile usage, and the volume of data was growing all the time. We were struggling to use it effectively to understand the full customer journey,” says Jen Wells, Multi Channel Geographic Development and Reporting Manager for EE. “Very early on, we realised we needed a way to understand which data was valuable, plus a way to draw insight from it and share it around the organisation. We wanted smarter analytics that would help us learn more about our customers and make informed decisions about how to meet their needs.”

For EE, using GIS to get this insight was the most obvious solution. “We knew we wanted to use GIS because of the visual way it presents data,” says Wells. “What we didn’t know was which technology would be best for us.”

EE compared technology from a number of GIS providers. Based on the findings, the company provisionally chose ArcGIS 10 for Desktop from Esri UK. “It was clear why Esri is the market leader. Its GIS solution has greater capability and functionality than any of the others we looked at.”

However, it wasn’t just the technology that was important to EE. Training was also an important element of the solution, to help the business get the most out of its investment. Before committing to a purchase, Wells discussed the training options with her Esri UK account manager. “Seeing as I’d never used GIS technology before, he recommended that I attend ArcGIS for Desktop Part 1, a two-day training course that covers the basics of the technology. He also explained we could work together to develop a bespoke training plan that would help me tackle each stage of our customer data analysis with the right support. We opted for five sessions, spread out over the course of a year.”

“I was impressed with this tailored approach. I felt confident that the technology and training package was the best option for our business.”

Today, EE is successfully using the GIS to get new customer insight. “We’ve made good progress thanks to Esri UK. I now have the knowledge to experiment with the software and to set up my own models,” Jen confirms. “And we’re constantly reassessing how we use the technology, to be sure we get the most out of it.”

“Other areas of the business are now using the GIS, and people are very excited about what the technology can do. They love the way it helps them to visualise what’s happening around the country. Over the past year, the GIS has become part of our daily vocabulary.”

Wells has also found the ArcGIS 10 for Desktop Part 1 course to be very valuable. “It showed me what I needed to know to get started with the software straight away. It also gave me the knowledge to get the most out of my bespoke training programme from day one.”

Wells now plans to attend training on ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and ModelBuilder. “As the Esri tool has so many capabilities, I think that the training, particularly the bespoke training, is very worthwhile. The training we developed with Esri UK was very tailored to our needs.”