Customer Care Replacements
In a customer care survey of 304 North American
utilities completed by UtiliPoint earlier this year, water
utilities are beginning to replace what is known as the
customer information system (CIS). In 2002, 2.2 percent
of the water utilities in North America were in the market
to replace their CIS. That compares to 9.5 percent this
year, a dramatic increase in activity.
Source: UtiliPoint International, Inc.
Yesterday I interviewed Denver Water CIS project manager
Mary Price. According to Price, the selection project took
approximately 2 years to complete. Denver Water did most
of the work internally, briefly bringing in an outside consultant
to review the short-list of vendors, which included 3 license
providers. “We wanted some industry perspective to
make sure we were getting the right players on our short-list,”
said Price. “The reason we decided to replace the
CIS was that we could not give our customers all the services
they wanted, and we wanted to roll 3 different systems into
one.” Denver Water is planning to utilize Open-c Solutions
to replace a legacy CIS, a miscellaneous accounts receivable
system, and what the utility calls its “tap sales
system,” or the system that currently manages sales
of the physical tap and the right to water.
After an extensive evaluation, demonstrations, an RFI,
and a three week usability lab set up on-site in Denver,
the selection team chose Open-c. “I was very pleased
to see such a consensus from our selection team,”
said Price.
Drought Played a Role
As mentioned earlier, selection took the better
part of 2 years. Denver Water had originally planned to
make a CIS selection last fall but the drought in the West
delayed the decision.
The entire western United States has been plagued with
a severe drought recently. Denver Water was not immune from
this drought. Last year the utility's water reserves dropped
dangerously low, prompting an aggressive water conservation
program that worked. Some may say that it worked too well.
According to the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Water sales
this year are likely to fall $8 million short of projections,
thanks to conservation efforts by customers. Water revenues
are expected to be $125 million, down from an anticipated
$133 million.
The news means Denver residents are taking the drought
seriously, but it could also mean the utility will sell
less water over the long term and may have to find new ways
to finance major projects, according to Denver Water finance
director David LaFrance.
During the drought Denver Water held open meetings with
customers to educate them and to solicit ideas to help alleviate
the lack of water issue. “Our customers were asking
for functionality that we simply could not handle with the
existing system,” said Price. “We knew we had
to replace it in order to fulfill some of the requirements
being requested from our customers.”
This spring the water reserves had increased and Denver
Water started the selection effort again, eventually selecting
and beginning work with Open-c.
Open-c Solutions
Open-c Solutions, a subsidiary of NWP Services
Corp. headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif., delivers systems
and services to utilities and energy companies to enhance
operating efficiencies and ensure long-term profitable customer
relationships utilizing their state of the art Open-cIS
platform.
Open-c Solutions was formed in 1998 when ex-Accenture employees
who were experienced with the Customer/1 CIS product formed
a “think-tank” of sorts that resulted in a new
CIS product known as Open-cIS. The original intent was to
create a new CIS that was more of a product solution and
less of a customized solution.
Current features of the Open-cIS product include:
