Billing & Customer Care

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The firm had been developing a good track record for its Banner Advantage system
with medium-sized utilities such as Nevada Power and Public Service New Mexico and
in the public-power market, where excellent customer service and flexibility are critical
components of a vendor/utility relationship. Then, midway through the first two Oneok
company installations, SCT was purchased by Indus.
That introduced another level of system integration to the project, and Indus now
touts Banner as a core component of its Service Delivery Management suite of customer
solutions. Moore called it a “connect to everything approach” that’s particularly well
suited to Oneok’s varied circumstances.
Oneok says it is highly pleased with the results. In Texas, the system went live by
Memorial Day 2004, and Kansas Gas’ CIS was on-line the following Labor Day. Besides
meeting targeted deadlines and staying within a budget estimated at $30 million to
$40 million, there were few of the usual problems with code conversions. “The code that
we got was of a higher quality than what I expected Indus to provide, even though we
had a high level of customization,” Moore said.
Still, change is never easy for accounts and billing staff, he acknowledged. “The old
legacy system was mainframe-based, so we have a total technology upgrade and different
end-user experience,” he said.“ These people had been using the same system
for 20 years.”
While the system is working well, the staff acceptance level has been a challenge.
“We’re still getting people up to speed,” he said. “In Texas, we trained users on a moving
target. Basically, we gave them a parachute and threw them out of the plane.”
DOWN ON THE CO-OP
While Oneok needed to find a flexible system to accommodate different companies, the
CoServ organization found it needed to combine accounts, data, workflow and business
processes for its two affiliates — the CoServ Electric Co-op and CoServ Gas, Ltd.
The electric co-op was founded in 1937 while the gas utility was added in 1998. The
North Texas companies experienced tremendous load growth in 2004, adding 16,000
new accounts – a more than 13 percent increase.
The CIS Infinity product turned out to be ideal for the co-op’s needs by giving the
utility the ability to integrate membership tracking with billing, in real time and via the
Internet. It also allows for a single point of customer contact for those who take both
gas and electric services while minimizing custom programming and eliminating much
of the manual labor previously used for keeping accounts current.
Sims, CoServ Electric’s vice president of information services, credits the vendor,
Advanced Utility Systems, for its thorough training and partnership with utility staff.
“Because of the preparation and training, implementation was one of the best I’ve ever
seen,” she stated.
The CIS industry has taken its fair share of criticism for costly and problematic implementations
in the past, and many utilities have avoided changing out nearly obsolete
legacy systems until it becomes absolutely necessary. Given the experiences at PG&E,
Oneok, and CoServ; however, it appears that the newest generation of products are
bridging the performance gap between completely customized applications and standardized
but flexible solutions.
Harizal said she considers the SPL CorDaptix platform to be as close to “off-theshelf”
as is possible for such a complex task. “It’s similar to a Microsoft product,” she
said. “It’s not unique to us. We like the fact that we get the benefit of other clients’ use
and as SPL refines the product, we can incorporate those changes.”
Moore sees things a little differently, while still praising the flexibility of the Indus
applications. “It’s a panacea to say that CIS is going to be completely off-the-shelf,”
Moore said. “In utilities, CIS is the system that gets customized the most.”
www.energycentral.com ENERGYBIZ MAGAZINE 47