Company Overview

Utilities face immense pressure to maintain vast, distributed infrastructure networks, from power lines and pipelines to communication cables. The efficiency and safety of these operations hinge on accurate, real-time geospatial data. Cliffhanger Solutions’ founders, with over 30 years of experience in the field, recognized the critical need for a platform that could bridge the gap between back-office systems and dynamic field operations. Their Atlas platform was specifically engineered to address these challenges, enabling utilities and their contractors to visualize and capture asset information directly in the field for tasks like pole inspections, outage management, and maintenance.

Key Success Points

The Challenge: Disconnected Field Data and Operational Bottlenecks

Traditional utility field operations were often plagued by a disconnect between office-based GIS data and real-world field conditions. Field workers frequently contended with outdated maps, manual data collection methods, and a lack of real-time synchronization. This led to significant inefficiencies: GPS inaccuracies and poor satellite reception compromised data quality, offline workflows were cumbersome, and integrating real-time updates back into the central GIS system was a constant struggle. App performance issues, such as freezing and crashing, further hampered productivity, creating frustration and delaying critical tasks like pole inspections and damage assessments. The sheer volume of data required for offline use, often gigabytes for large regions, presented a formidable technical hurdle for synchronization and storage on mobile devices. These challenges collectively increased operational costs, heightened risks, and slowed response times, particularly during emergencies.

The Solution: Atlas – The Unified Geospatial Nerve Center

Cliffhanger Solutions introduced Atlas as a comprehensive solution designed to unify field and office operations. Atlas provides a single, intuitive platform that allows both field and office workers to access, visualize, manage, and edit asset information, including relevant corporate data from various back-office systems. Its core strength lies in its ability to provide real-time data availability, enabling stakeholders to monitor live task progress with a full audit trail that captures who performed what actions, where, and when. This level of transparency and immediate feedback transforms reactive maintenance into a proactive strategy, allowing utilities to make smarter investments and ensure service continuity.

Technical Innovation: Offline-First and Schemaless Data Mastery

Atlas’s technical prowess is highlighted by its robust “online or offline” capability, a critical innovation for field work. The mobile applications for iOS and Android automatically detect when connectivity is lost and allow the switch to offline mode, allowing users to continue working with locally stored vector data. Once connectivity is restored, new data becomes available, and all captured work is automatically uploaded, ensuring data integrity and continuity. This “no airplane mode needed” offline experience reflects a deep understanding of user needs in challenging environments.

Furthermore, Atlas’s schema-less architecture is a game-changer for data integration. Unlike rigid systems, Atlas can ingest data from any existing data model without requiring extensive configuration of the client application. This eliminates the need for complex middleware or costly data transformations, a common pain point in integrating diverse geospatial datasets. The platform’s use of vector data, rather than raster, provides superior map detail, a faster and crisper user experience, and significantly simplifies IT administration by reducing hardware demands. This technical foundation ensures that Atlas is not just functional but also highly adaptable and efficient, capable of handling complex geospatial information with ease.

Success Metrics to Highlight

The impact of Atlas is quantifiable and impressive. The platform has facilitated the collection of over 4 billion datapoints and processed more than 5 million GPS waypoints globally. Specifically in pole inspections, a critical utility task, Atlas has been instrumental in completing over 3 million inspections. These metrics underscore the platform’s scalability, reliability, and widespread adoption across the utility sector, demonstrating its capacity to handle massive volumes of field data efficiently. While specific cost savings and efficiency improvements are not explicitly quantified, the sheer scale of data processed, and inspections completed strongly implies significant operational gains and reduced risks for clients.

Client Impact Stories

A major North American utility company, grappling with the challenges of managing an aging infrastructure and a geographically dispersed workforce, adopted Atlas to modernize its pole inspection program. Prior to Atlas, inspectors relied on paper forms and manual data entry, leading to delays, data inaccuracies, and a cumbersome audit process. The transition to Atlas was seamless, with field teams quickly adapting to the intuitive mobile interface. One field supervisor remarked, “Atlas is a fantastic product that has added a lot of value and efficiency to my responsibilities. The ability to track progress in real-time and have a full audit trail for compliance is invaluable”. The ability for multiple users to work on the same project concurrently, facilitated by database version management, significantly improved collaboration and reduced the risk of data loss or corruption. This transformation allowed the utility to perform inspections faster, ensure data accuracy, and proactive address maintenance needs, thereby enhancing grid reliability and safety.

Technical Excellence

Cliffhanger Solutions’ technical excellence is rooted in its modern, cloud-native architecture. Atlas is containerized using Docker and supports deployment on leading cloud platforms such as AWS. This approach ensures high scalability, resilience, and independent deployment of services, allowing the platform to efficiently handle fluctuating workloads and integrate new features without disrupting existing operations. For security, Atlas employs robust protocols including dedicated API keys, two-factor authentication (2FA), trusted IP addresses, and Single Sign-On (SSO). Furthermore, its implementation of role-based access control (RBAC) ensures that users only access data and functionalities relevant to their specific roles, adhering to the principle of least privilege and safeguarding sensitive geospatial information. The platform’s advanced form builder empowers clients to configure data capture forms themselves in real-time without requiring complex database changes, demonstrating a commitment to flexible and user-driven solutions.

Company Culture & Values

Cliffhanger Solutions’ culture is defined by a deep commitment to solving complex technical challenges with a focus on user experience and continuous innovation. Their core values emphasize affordability, functionality, security, and ease of use, directly translating into their product design and client relationships. The company believes that “Our customers are our partners” and that “Data should be available from anywhere, on any device, even for your clients!”. This collaborative and accessible philosophy is evident in their end-user-centric design, which prioritizes the needs of field workers and office staff alike. Their dedication to being “proactive rather than reactive” is reflected in their integration of machine learning for predictive maintenance and cybersecurity, anticipating issues before they escalate. This forward-thinking approach, combined with a pragmatic belief that “services and solutions don’t have to cost a fortune,” positions Cliffhanger Solutions as a truly client-focused innovator in the geospatial domain.