Automapping: a bold new world for business automation – Bozeman

Bozeman Council was looking to alleviate manual processes during GIS mapping, and opted for automation technology to help. Through a novel use of ThinkAutomation, Bozeman now has a portable, visual data processing tool that helps automate the mapping of their streets.

Sector: Public

Requirement: To improve the speed and efficiency of GIS mapping

Solution: A creative ThinkAutomation implementation with custom, hyper-specific workflow builds

The challenge

If a member of the public or a company wishes to dig underground in Bozeman, they first need to contact the council call centre to check whether underground sewer and water lines are in the way.

Bozeman call centre agents then process these enquiries and send an email to a dedicated team, who manage them manually. The emails, or ‘locate requests’, are assigned to a driver to investigate. The driver must then travel to the location and mark out any utility lines with spray paint. As you can imagine, this process is time-consuming and requires manual input at multiple stages from start to finish.

The solution

Tired of drowning in emails, Bozeman Council completed some online research and found ThinkAutomation. The organisation took out a free 30-day trial to see if the product was a fit for handling their locate requests.

Bozeman Council created ThinkAutomation workflows to automatically mine emails containing locate requests for their key data. These emails are then recorded into a database and exported to a cloud vendor. Next, the cloud vendor maps each locate request via GPS. Rather than having data gathering in an inbox, Bozeman Council now has a portable, visual and efficient tool that everyone can track in the palm of their hand.