Utilimarc announced the signing on of Avista Corp. to its Business Intelligence platform for fleets. Avista Utilities services four northwestern states with electricity and natural gas to nearly 340,000 customers. It chose Utilimarc for its teams' deep domain expertise within the utilities industry and its platform's capabilities to clean and combine data sources allowing for a complete operational analysis of its vast utilities fleet.

"Utilimarc took our various data sources and incorporated them into a single central reporting platform, which for us, helped drastically in terms of enhancing productivity and report accuracy," said Greg Loew, fleet manager for Avista Corp.

A main goal for Avista was to be able to combine its fleet management system and vehicle telematics data to allow for proper maintenance scheduling and accurate meter insights for LTD (life-to-date) odometers, engine hours, and PTO (power-take-off) readings; allowing for a more effective fleet management process, as well as the reduction of wasted monetary resources.

"With the integration of Utilimarc's Business Intelligence platform, Avista is able to integrate all of their data sources into our BI platform – creating a central reporting system of trusted dashboards that all levels of fleet management can access and understand. We were also able to help implement a meter-based maintenance cycle, rather than time-based (when warranties expire), allowing for Avista to save money on necessary maintenance," said Michael Huhn, director of Fleet Analytics for Utilimarc.

Avista's vehicle and equipment meter data in a single analytical environment also allowed for their fleet management team to see exactly when and where aerial lifts were activated, just in case there should be any issues with equipment that were in need of a fast remedy.