1. Chip Harris
Westin Technology Solutions, LLC.
Changing or Upgrading Your Billing System Minimizing the Pain of Change While Improving Customer Service

2. Changing or Upgrading Your Billing System So, How Long Has It Been?

3. Changing or Upgrading Your Billing System Relieve the Pain, Achieve the Gains
Understanding the pain of change
Can we be successful?
What would success look like?
Strategy/Plan for success

4. Why the Wait? Concerns and Pain Related to Change
Cost $$$ - “Lease or Own?” (site license, hosted, or SaaS?)
Impact on staff – time, priorities, retirements, IT resources
Change (technology, functionality, business processes, training, support)
How your organization handle change … and mistakes (Change Management)
Competing organizational needs/priorities
Who will own the project (and the changes)? (IT project vs. business project)
Testing, conversion, and data integrity, reports (upgrading and changing systems)
Training – who will develop training materials, deliver training, and ensure engagement?
Impact on customers / customer service – changes and possible complaints
Why the Wait? Concerns and Pain Related to Change

5. Pain If You Don’t Make A Change or Upgrade
Unable to implement leading-edge functionality and related services
Unable to meet customer demands (keep up with the Jones’)
Loss of support, end of life for system and/or components
Continue to do LOTS of manual work
Unable to access and leverage data across the utility
Continue to work in silos
Unable to improve efficiencies – “Do more with less”
Negative impacts on employee development and morale
The cost of “settle”
Pain If You Don’t Make A Change or Upgrade

6. How Much Change Would It Be? (Assessment)
What are the needs and gaps?
What are the drivers and priorities for change?
Need for improvement, we know we are falling behind
Having to say “No” to our customers and staff too often
Loss of technical support (supported vs. unsupported versions of CIS and interfacing systems, as well as supporting IT infrastructure)
Perceptions/misconceptions and realities of costs vs. benefits (business case)
What would change (scope)?
Just billing?
Interfacing systems?
Business processes – manual to automated?
Technology?
Vendors?
How Much Change Would It Be? (Assessment)

7. Can We Manage the Change Successfully?
Top Down Leadership / Bottom Up Buy-in
Who will make the decisions? - Roles/Responsibilities?
Project Team
Executive Management
Middle Management
Project Management
How will the decisions be made? – Process for making, documenting, and communicating decisions
Do you need a governance structure?
Who will do the work? – Internal resources? Backfill? Consultants?
Will you need formal change management to help ensure user adoption and organizational readiness?
Can We Manage the Change Successfully?

8. It is a PROJECT (Needs/Gaps, Requirements, Solutions, Assistance?)
($$$ / Resources)
(Resources - People, Priorities)

9. Upgrading or Changing Systems
Challenges and Opportunities
Technology & Business Process Improvements Enhance Customer Management
CIS SOLUTION
CMMS Integration
Strategy Development
Call Center Operations
Self-service IVR, Bill Pay
Meter Management
AMR/AMI
Route Optimization
GIS Integration
FIS Integration
Service Order Management
It’s not just about billing anymore –
Mobile workforce (MWM) - WIP
Meter data management/portals
Call center metrics, outbound calling, customer alerts, self-service portals
Electronic payments/billing
Integration with GIS and Asset Management
As ad hoc tools/solutions are added to address acute pain points, older billing systems get more disconnected/obsolete

10. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
How well are your Technology, Processes, and People working together across your utility –
especially from an “end-to-end perspective”?

11. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
What are your major pain points from a customer perspective based on the high level utility process below?
Confess the PAIN

12. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
New Service Requests Pain:
Meter sets performed by Operations in Asset Management System (CMMS)
manual handoff requiring manual entry into CIS
results in estimations, back billing, and reconciliation
contributes to delinquency, collections, write-offs
Process Service Orders Pain:
High volume of delinquent cut-offs and meter reading exceptions – “whack-a-mole”
Repeated phone calls and field trips – no WIP view
Difficult to manage volume of service orders and phone calls, as well as priorities

13. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
Meter Reading and Meter Management Pain:
Meter replacements performed by Ops in CMMS
conflicts between a meter as an asset and a cash register, especially without integration between CMMS & CIS
high volume of meter repairs and replacements
manual handoff from CMMS, manual entry into CIS
results in errors, estimations, back billing, and resulting reconciliation

14. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
Call Center Pain:
High abandonment rate – repeated calls (no view of WIP)
Long wait times
Delinquency Pain:
High volume of delinquent cut-offs
Delinquent fee to cover costs, but increases account balance
Customers think they have paid, get cut off again
Customer must call back with confirmation # for turn–on order
Turn-on orders must be generated manually

15. Challenges and Opportunities – Pain vs. Gain
Payments Pain:
Online payments not effectively integrated with CIS/FMS
Lags in posting payments (manual processes to close gaps)
Customer must call back with confirmation # for turn –on order
Turn-on orders must be generated manually
Payment vendor provides customer information updates file, but without integration, updates to CIS are manual

16. Challenges – Sources of Pain / Opportunities for Improvement
Outdated technology, with limited integration and data sharing
Inefficient business processes
rework
manual work
excessive handoffs
duplicate activities
long cycle times
Long wait times
People working with limited tools in sub optimized silos, with limited awareness of upstream and downstream activities – potentially contributing to the pain of each other

17. How is Technology Driving the Need for Better Planning?
New Technology is not a Free Lunch!
Automation and integration create opportunities and challenges
Drives the need to understand, manage, and report on how work and transactions flow across the organization
Automation takes no prisoners! Focus on handoffs is critical!
Automation can fortify operational silos and sub-optimization
Identify points of leverage and opportunities for synergy/alignment
Coordinated planning and execution is essential for success with both technology and business processes improvement

18. Where You Want to Be (Not Falling Behind) – Integrated Technology and Optimized Business Processes for Improved Customer Service
Customer on-line information access (push & pull)
CSR real-time access to utility-wide information
AMI for real time reads and MDM for analytics
Mobile workforce management
Asset management integration
“Spatially-enabled” with GIS across the utility
BI and dashboards
IVR, telephony integration, customer engagement

19. Do You Have A Strategy and Plan For Pain Relief?
Business Policies
Levels of Service
KPIs
Performance Targets
Decision Support Needs
Transactional Processing Needs
Data Processing
Data Storage & Retention
Data Analytics
Business
Strategies
Business
Processes
Data Management
IT Resources & IT Processes
Management Updates / Reviews / Reports
Status / Progress
Actual Performance / Performance Gaps to Targets
Actionable Information
Software Tools / Applications for Analytics and Trending
Database Administration
Data Analytics
Close Gaps -
No or insufficient Business Strategies
No or insufficient Performance Metrics
Lack of Policies to guide practices/processes
Lack of Data Governance

20. Solution Strategy and Implementation Plan
Technology and Business Process Needs Assessment/Prioritization
Market Analysis
Resource Planning - Project Roles and Decision Processes
Requirements Definition, RFP Development
Solution/Vendor Evaluation and Selection
Contract Development and Negotiations
Project Planning, Scheduling, Change Management, and Implementation
Solution Strategy and Implementation Plan

21. Questions?
Chip Harris Senior Consultant Westin Technology Solutions, LLC Cell number =