With over 3.3 million customers and almost 1.5 million drinking water outlets in 177 municipalities, De Watergroep is the largest drinking water company in Flanders. Correct address information is therefore 'key' for their operational and administrative activities. To manage this information centrally, De Watergroep opted for a unique internal application with Belmap as its data source.

Central, quality data management as the highest good

"Many of our internal processes use address information," explains Kim De Latthauwer, ICT Team Manager GIS/CAD at De Watergroep. "In doing so, the address information at our disposal not only has to be correct, but also easy to manage and access internally by a multitude of employees. And there are quite a few of them. Every day, some 1,500 colleagues are working to guarantee the water supply through no less than 34,000 kilometres of pipes spread across East and West Flanders, Flemish Brabant and Limburg."

To manage all the associated address information, De Watergroep has CAR (Central Address Register), an internally developed GIS-driven application. For the delivery of address data in that application, the company wanted to be completely unburdened. "We occasionally bump into problems with the data quality of the supplied data. Also, we already maintain our address information centrally, but most internal systems still contain their own address data."

Both because of the better initial data quality and the convenient feedback mechanism, this address management solution will unburden our organisation completely

KIM DE LATTHAUWER, ICT TEAM MANAGER GIS/CAD AT DE WATERGROEP

Reliable technical solution

To change this, De Watergroep is doing so with GIM as its partner and Belmap as its data source. Kim: "A high-performance and reliable technical solution emerged. Not only for supplying the source data, but also for reproducing it in our database. This in turn feeds our internal address management application CAR in a compliant and uniform manner."

The solution also provides a feedback mechanism between Belmap and De Watergroep's CAR application. "How that mechanism works? Suppose De Watergroep or other Belmap customers identify new or anomalous address data, it will be automatically validated and read into the system, or manually evaluated by the Belmap data team if necessary. In this way, De Watergroep has the most up-to-date address information at all times and everywhere."

Completely unburdened

The technical set-up was clearly to De Watergroep's liking. "Both because of the better initial data quality and the convenient feedback mechanism, GIM's Belmap solution will relieve us of all our worries," concludes Kim.