:: Case Studies

XSL products and services have provided the key integration capabilities to many companies around the world. The following offer summary descriptions of some of its varied implementations.

:: SOGEI

Societa Generale d'Informatica—SOGEI chose Xmarc and Oracle to implement a client/server and Web-based geo-spatial system for on-line processing of all land surveying and property ownership transactions.

The Oracle8i platform data management system, the Oracle Spatial technology, and Xmarc's Internet visualization platform power a national land database and deliver more efficient land transactions.

The system has been in operation for four years and currently uses 1,100 license equivalents across 101 regional servers throughout Italy. SOGEI has also contracted for 8,000 Internet license equivalents to support its e-government initiative, which will support up to 80,000 users from central, regional, and local government to the surveyors themselves.

The system makes land, data, plans, and many other types of geographic information readily available to authorities. The economic importance is significant as geographic data is related to building construction, road, infrastructure development, civil defense, tax assessment and collection, urban and regional planning, agriculture, and a myriad of other uses.

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:: NYC-311

New York City 311—New York City's new non-emergency citizen response (311) system, built by Accenture has been geographically enabled with Xmarc technologies by PlanGraphics.

The 311 system gives New Yorkers one easy-to-remember phone number to obtain all City services, including street repairs, illegally parked vehicle removal, tree prunings, and tax or tourist information. In addition, it allows the City to reduce operating costs, use resources more efficiently, measure accountability and citizen feedback, and deliver timely, consistent, and personalized customer service.

The Citywide GIS Utility is the City government's central clearinghouse for spatial and tabular data and analytical services. PlanGraphics has developed tools to access existing legacy systems throughout the City. Access to these systems and their databases is vitally important for the success of the 311 system to deliver accurate and real-time data to the public.

In order to deliver sub-second response time, access to the Oracle database occurs through Xmarc's fx8i OCI servlet. The application at current levels of functionality and usage uses 54 license equivalents and supports 300 call center employees and 30,000 transactions per day.

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:: Green Flag

Green Flag is a partner company to Direct Line insurance company, which in turn is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland - throughout, a group that relies on a customer-relationship approach and systems to maintain levels of service and profitability.

The Green Flag operation provides roadside assistance (similar to AAA in North America) to motor insurance policyholders. Through its call center, it responds to approximately one million incidents each year and strives to maintain a best in practice service among its peers.

FIRE is an integrated part in the process between the call center system and the policyholder requiring assistance. On validation of the caller's policy, the operator checks the availability of a response vehicle in a satisfactory location to support the client within the service level margins. Green Flag has an average call out time of 39 minutes and reaches 90 percent of its one million calls within the hour.

Overall, saving a few seconds when allocating and choosing the most appropriate response vehicle with respect to location ensures cost-effective practice at Green Flag; FIRE enables the rapid completion of spatial analysis in the call center process used by 150 operators daily.

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:: Vodafone

Xmarc developed and supplied specialised database and visualization software to Vodafone Ltd, the UK's leading mobile-phone network, to optimize the frequency planning, design and services offered by the Vodafone cellular network in the UK.

The technology was used to build a spatial data warehouse solution allowing Vodafone to offer enhanced services to more than 6.8 million customers. The overall functionality includes raster and vector data integration with access to geo-location information such as the national post-code system. Spatial queries integrate several corporate data-sets to deliver the required graphic and alphanumeric feedback.

The project has been deemed a success by Vodafone and has proven the ability to store, analyse and retrieve spatial (and related) data from a corporate Oracle environment.

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