Data Management | Fort Wayne’s eRIS Adoption: Small Town, Big Challenges

Located in the northeast corner of Indiana, the City of Fort Wayne is a blue-collar manufacturing town at heart. Once a tiny frontier town, it’s now home to 300,000 residents. It’s the responsibility of Fort Wayne’s City Utilities team to serve those locals. It’s a big job that spans several teams, plants, and offices.
Like many utilities across the US, Fort Wayne relied on GE Proficy Portal for many years. When GE announced it was retiring Portal, Fort Wayne faced two distinct challenges. First, users both liked and were accustomed to the layout and interface of Portal. Second, Portal contained a vast amount of information that encompassed large swaths of people and numerous processes. The Fort Wayne team knew transitioning would be a challenge.

Unlike other cloud-based data solutions, eRIS implementations have the flexibility to meet the design, layout, and user experience demands of specific utilities. In the installation process, the team at Fort Wayne were literally able to whiteboard their ideal solution. This resulted in a site layout totally unique to their team.

Making the solution feel familiar was a priority. Like their bygone Portal, Fort Wayne’s eRIS site allows for the feel of separate sites all within a single data access point—all the city’s data is accessible from everywhere in eRIS. Fort Wayne included lots of visual cues that help users know where they are in the site. In addition, sites were heavily focused around information—what users come to eRIS for in the first place. Because eRIS felt like an old friend, Fort Wayne was able to incentivize user buy-in and adoption immensely.

eRIS didn’t just replicate the old Proficy Portal. While users were attracted to a familiar layout, the real benefits of eRIS were just beginning. Unlike GE’s Portal which could only connect to Fort Wayne’s Historian data, eRIS connects to practically infinite data sources—including the same Historian as Portal. Fort Wayne has since connected Lab and Telog data to eRIS and continues to explore new sources.

Further, the cutting-edge data visualization tools in eRIS far exceed Portal. Robust dashboards feature unique graphic data that give easy insights into key utility metrics. With eRIS, Fort Wayne can view data trends over time and begin to take proactive steps to save energy, predict leaks, and regulate flow. eRIS isn’t a replacement, it’s an upgrade. Fort Wayne is proof positive that all municipalities across North America can benefit from and thrive with progressive utility technology.