ZCE, a regional Czech energy and distribution company, completed migration from ArcInfo 7 to ArcFM 8.3 within one year. The new solution provided enhanced functionality and a utility-specific enterprise GIS solution. Following the ArcFM “design, develop and deploy” project methodology, ArcData, Miner & Miner's distributor for the Czech Republic, conducted the implementation and migrated the data to the geodatabase.

ZCE is a member of CEZ Group, the largest energy group in Central and Eastern Europe, and covers a service area of 6800 miles with a population of 860,000 in the Western region of the Czech Republic.

The ArcFM Solution was integrated with SAP's IS and PS modules for this project. The GIS SAP Business Connector and SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP IX) are used to integrate both technologies. The GIS also provides data to other operational systems within the company including outage management and customer information (CIS) systems. Currently, ZCE has 30 editors located in five separate offices using the system and over 300 viewers accessing data via the web using ArcIMS.

Petr Skala, GIS coordinator for ZCE, says, “At first, our users were a bit unsure about using the new system, but after only one month of production use, they are very comfortable with ArcFM and ArcGIS. The benefits of this solution can be summarized as follows: faster and easier editing for our users, GIS data availability for all relevant employees at any time, and robust integration with other enterprise information systems.”