This story was done in collaboration with Safe Software partner Seamless Data.
When critical data becomes a source of uncertainty
Alpine Energy is the electricity distribution business for South Canterbury, New Zealand, delivering energy to approximately 36,000 homes and businesses.
Behind those services is a complex network of systems and integrations supporting billing, GIS, asset management, field operations, network planning, and other critical business processes. Over time, that integration landscape had become increasingly difficult to manage.
One of the biggest pain points was Alpine’s legacy Installation Control Point (ICP) database. The system was unstable, required daily server reboots, and occasionally lost files. That created particular pressure during the monthly billing cycle, when Alpine had just one day to prepare and deliver critical data used to inform electricity retailers what to bill.
“It was time-critical. It was a bit of a white-knuckle ride,” says Jess McDonald, CIO at Alpine Energy.
The challenges extended beyond billing. Alpine’s GIS data supported processes across the organization, but teams had limited visibility into the integrations connecting those systems. Integrations could fail, data sometimes needed manual verification, and it was hard to tell which workflows were still necessary.
“We had so many integration workbenches,” says McDonald. “When we wanted to look at replacing it, we didn’t really understand what we were replacing.”
Making sense of the integration landscape
Alpine partnered with Seamless to understand and simplify the integration environment before rebuilding it.
Rather than simply moving every existing workflow into a new platform, Seamless worked with Alpine to identify what each integration was doing, which processes still belonged in GIS, and where purpose-built systems would be more appropriate.
For example, Alpine moved field mobility into Fulcrum rather than continuing to use the GIS platform for that purpose, then integrated the resulting information back into GIS.
This rationalization helped Alpine create a clearer picture of how data moves across the organization and which business processes depend on each integration.
Today, Seamless manages 11 integrations for Alpine through FME Flow Hosted, supporting workflows including ICP synchronization, work orders, network models, assets, defects, vegetation, outages, attachments, and third-party data.
Moving integration to FME Flow Hosted
The modernization also aligned with Alpine’s broader cloud-first strategy.
Most of the organization’s applications are delivered as SaaS or hosted in Microsoft Azure, so Alpine wanted its integration infrastructure to follow the same direction. FME Flow Hosted provided a cloud-hosted integration environment without requiring Alpine to continue maintaining on-premises infrastructure and the operational overhead that came with it.
FME now connects data across systems including ArcGIS Enterprise and Utility Network, ArcGIS Online, Fulcrum, Business Central, ARC Billing, Microsoft Fabric, SharePoint, Azure File Storage, and other enterprise applications.
For Alpine, this creates a more visible and manageable integration layer across systems that previously felt fragmented.
Rather than troubleshooting individual workbenches without a clear understanding of their dependencies, teams now have greater visibility into the business processes supported by GIS integrations and greater confidence in the data moving between them.
Bringing confidence back to monthly billing
One of the most critical integrations connects Alpine’s ICP data with its billing environment. FME synchronizes ICP information between ArcGIS Utility Network and the ARC billing platform, helping ensure each ICP is correctly connected to the electrical network so rating and billing information is accurate.
That reliability has transformed the monthly billing process. The billing team no longer faces the uncertainty of missing files during a time-sensitive turnaround. The required data is available where it is needed, creating a smoother, more predictable billing cycle.
Alpine has also eliminated the legacy environment’s daily server reboots.
For processes subject to auditing and regulatory requirements, that increased reliability gives Alpine greater confidence that critical billing data moves consistently between systems.
From fighting fires to improving services
The impact extends well beyond billing. Reliable integrations support processes across Alpine, including asset lifecycle planning, future network planning, work orders, field data, vegetation management, outages, and safety-critical activities such as network tracing.
Seamless now provides the 11 integrations as a managed service, taking responsibility for ongoing business-as-usual data flows and supporting Alpine when changes or issues arise.
That has shifted Alpine’s internal digital team’s role; instead of spending time maintaining integration infrastructure and resolving recurring technical issues, the team can focus on improving services and delivering additional value to the organization.
With FME Flow Hosted providing the integration foundation and Seamless managing the environment, Alpine now has a clearer, more reliable view of how its systems connect and a platform that can continue supporting the organization as its digital ecosystem evolves.
