Northwest Natural is one of the largest
gas suppliers in the state of Oregon.
We have about 750,000 meters or approximately 2
million customers that we provide natural gas to.
So for real-time data,
it's absolutely imperative that we have the most updated information.
At any moment,
we can get a call from one of our leak
detections or from a customer from an odor call.
And we need to be able to accurately dispatch the nearest
crew to the job site so they can perform their work
and analysis to see if there's a threat to the community.
So having the most real-time,
up-to-date information to us is absolutely paramount.
We had a lot of stacks of paper and
probably about six different applications.
And a lot of them had very complimentary features and functionality.
So the last straw for me when I was visiting our
engineering team was looking at their stacks of paper.
And I thought they were just historical documents
that they had just left behind and hadn't cleaned up.
And when I inquired about them,
they were like,
no,
those are the drawings from the last couple of weeks.
We have to get those and enter them into these two applications.
That's not the way that we need to operate.
That's when we kind of looked and said,
we need to do better than this.
And we went out to the market and found IQ Geo. And IQ Geo had the agility that we were looking
for as well as the leadership in this space.
And I think those two factors sealed the deal for
us and we knew that we would be in good hands.
As a senior leader of our IT&S organization,
I'm thinking about how I simplify our portfolio,
how I consolidate applications,
reduce the amount of technical debt.
And by doing that,
I'm making a significant investment,
but I'm also reducing the portfolio,
the complexity and the cost at the same time.
So I think if anyone is looking at considering IQ Geo,
don't forget about the horizontal platform,
right?
Drive out the technical debt,
reduce your complexity and give it a good look.
