‘From One Day to One Minute.’
Transforming Customer Notifications
with advanced Geo-productivity .
Enhancing Operational Efficiency with GIS Integration
Background
Western Power is one of Australia’s largest electricity distribution and transmission utilities, responsible for delivering power to more than 2.3 million customers across 255,000 square kilometres of Western Australia — from metropolitan Perth to some of the most remote regional communities in the country.
Operating and maintaining over 100,000 kilometres of powerlines and associated infrastructure, Western Power manages a vast and complex network that requires precise coordination and real-time visibility. Central to this is the ability to effectively communicate with customers during planned maintenance and outage events, ensuring timely, transparent, and accurate notifications.
Historically, this customer communication process was highly manual and time-intensive. Identifying affected customers during planned outages could take a few hours, requiring manually cross-reference GIS data and customer records. This not only delayed notifications but also impacted customer trust and operational efficiency.
Challenges: Time-Consuming Customer Notification Process
With millions of customers and many planned maintenance events each year, Western Power faced significant operational challenges in managing and communicating service interruptions effectively.
The process for notifying customers of planned outages relied heavily on manual identification of affected properties, often requiring teams to extract and reconcile geospatial and customer data across multiple systems.
Key challenges included:
Lengthy data reconciliation: Manual processes for identifying affected customers led to delays and inconsistency in communication.
Fragmented systems: GIS and CRM data existed in separate platforms, requiring duplication and manual validation.
Limited automation: Notification workflows depended on human input, slowing response times and increasing the risk of error.
Customer dissatisfaction: Delayed or incomplete notifications eroded customer trust and reduced satisfaction.
Western Power recognised that these inefficiencies were unsustainable for a network of its size. To achieve true operational excellence, it needed a modern, integrated approach that combined GIS intelligence with automated customer communication.
The Solution: A Powerful CRM and GIS-Based Integration
To overcome its communication challenges, Western Power implemented a GIS-integrated customer notification system powered by Maptaskr’s geospatial platform within Microsoft Dynamics 365. The goal was to unify location intelligence, customer data, and automation into a single, seamless process.
Through its deep integration with Dynamics 365, teams could now visualise outage zones, query impacted customer records, and initiate automated notifications directly from the map interface.
Key capabilities included:
Proximity Search: Automatically identified customers within defined outage boundaries using spatial relationships.
Automated Alerts: Instantly triggered personalised SMS and email notifications from within Dynamics 365.
Dynamic Layer Integration: Synchronized geospatial data with CRM systems in real time for accuracy.
Advanced Reporting: Delivered live dashboards and analytics on notification reach, timing, and performance.
By combining GIS intelligence with CRM automation, Western Power transformed a manual, day-long task into a near-instant customer communication workflow, setting a new operational benchmark for utilities.
OUTCOME
From One Day to One Minute
The integration of mapping tools with Microsoft Dynamics 365 drastically improved the utility provider’s customer notification process. By reducing notification time from a full day to just one minute, the company achieved a 144,000% increase in efficiency. This improvement has not only enhanced operational performance but has also elevated the customer experience, reinforcing the company’s commitment to reliability and service excellence.
