Basic Facts

• Fortune 500 company, established in 1998.
  
• Serves 21 million consumers in the US.
  
• Employs more than 12,000 employees.
  

Business Challenges

A Large Utility Company provides a wide spectrum of value-added electric, natural gas, broadband, and related products and services to a diverse range of customers. A merger of parent companies of two long established, and highly respected, investor-owned utilities created this Fortune 500 company. The union of Pacific Enterprises and Enova Corporation grew naturally from energy deregulation and the restructuring of the industry.

This largest customer base of any energy utility in the United States however faced problems on two accounts - construction work management and rolling blackout alerts.

The utility company’s existing work management system was long and complex. It was seen that customers involved with a construction project with the utility company had to call a project administrator to check the status of the project. For this the project administrator was required to access a legacy system to check the status and relay the information to the customer.

When it came to the rolling blackout alerts, deregulation of public utilities had created a situation where California experienced shortages of energy supply. Given the mandate that utility companies notify customers before blackouts occur, the utility company Energy had to look at a better technology to enable them perform better.

The utility company approached CTE to help implement an infrastructure that provides long-term benefits over many applications by enabling rapid application development and deployment.

Solution

The utility company Energy participated in CTE’s Cambridge Executive Workshop (CEW), an intensive program, where corporate executives and staff collaborate to identify new ideas and move them to deployment.

To address the construction work management issue, CTE proposed a web interface that can be extended to contractors and other parties involved in the construction process. In short, it would:

• Provide a web interface for customers to check the status of their current jobs
  
• Provide a web interface to existing legacy systems for the utility company representatives
  
• Open the currently closed work management system so that data may be shared throughout the utility company and its partners (e.g., contractors, etc.).
  

• Automate the notification of customers in blackout situations
  
• Provide automated notification in the manner that customers choose (voice call, mobile text alert, e-mail)
  
• Provide a mechanism for RBRP customers to quickly input generator readings.

Benefits

With CTE’s solutions, the utility company Energy will be able to reduce lag-time between phases in construction jobs. By providing web-based status updates on SDG&E construction, the utility company could save upto $650,000 per year (60 admins x 3 calls/day x 12min/call x 200 days x $30/hr = $650K).

The timely blackout alerts would help minimize impact on customers in an outage situation and reduce involuntary outages through customer cooperation. the utility company would be able to provide a mechanism for Rolling Blackout Reduction Program (RBRP) customers to quickly input generator readings. These RBRP customers previously had to go to generators, power them up, read meters, and report wattage.

The solution proposed by CTE would enable sending out automated alerts which would save upto $10,000 per year. An annual revenue impact of upto $640,000 is projected with the utility company minimizing the impact on customers in an outage situation and reducing involuntary outages through customer cooperation.

In addition to these, it would bring about intangible business benefits like increased customer satisfaction. It is estimated that a two-point increase in customer satisfaction would result in increased revenues of $150K annually.

In a nutshell, the utility company would be able to create newer revenue streams by extending its service offerings.