TriSum­mit Util­i­ties and Ver­tex­One Har­mo­nize To Achieve Cus­tomer Ser­vice Suc­cess Using CIS Sys­tems for Utilities

In this case study for ASUG, we look into how using a SAP S/4HANA-based sys­tem unites one Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tion built through util­i­ty subsidiaries.

The Back­ground: TriSum­mit Utilities

TriSum­mit Util­i­ties (TSU) is a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny with nat­ur­al gas dis­tri­b­u­tion util­i­ties and renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion assets. TSU serves approx­i­mate­ly 133,000 cus­tomers across Cana­da, deliv­er­ing low car­bon ener­gy, safe­ly and reli­ably. The com­pa­ny sup­plies ener­gy to more than 130,000 cus­tomers in three sep­a­rate provinces through its oper­at­ing subsidiaries:

Apex Util­i­ties Inc. (AUI)

Apex Util­i­ties Inc. serves approx­i­mate­ly 81,900 cus­tomers in more than 90 com­mu­ni­ties and sur­round­ing rur­al areas across the province of Alberta.

Her­itage Gas Lim­it­ed, which has since changed its name to East­ward Ener­gy, serves approx­i­mate­ly 8,500 cus­tomers in the Hal­i­fax Region­al Munic­i­pal­i­ty and rur­al areas in the province of Nova Scotia.

Pacif­ic North­ern Gas Ltd. (PNG)

Pacif­ic North­ern Gas Lim­it­ed serves approx­i­mate­ly 42,300 cus­tomers in more than 16 com­mu­ni­ties across the west­ern and north­east­ern areas of the province of British Columbia.

TSU has approx­i­mate­ly 475 employ­ees across its com­pa­nies and regions. It con­tin­ues to serve its cus­tomers’ ener­gy demands — a cus­tomer base that includes man­u­fac­tur­ers, edu­ca­tion­al and health­care insti­tu­tions, ser­vices sec­tors, and res­i­den­tial consumers.

In recent years, TSU has invest­ed in tech­nol­o­gy upgrades and inte­gra­tions to achieve improved inter­nal oper­a­tions and process­es. It has also stream­lined and enhanced cus­tomer ser­vices and experiences.

The Sit­u­a­tion: Lega­cy Sys­tem and Reg­u­la­to­ry Challenges

It can be chal­leng­ing to sup­port cus­tomer and busi­ness oper­at­ing needs and ser­vices across a three-util­i­ty com­pa­ny struc­ture and oper­ate in three sep­a­rate provinces and time zones. In 2019, chang­ing Cus­tomer Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (CIS) tech­nol­o­gy require­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance issues fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed TSU’s situation.

The Tech­nol­o­gy Perspective

On the tech­nol­o­gy front, IT teams had been man­ag­ing dis­parate, out­dat­ed sys­tems orig­i­nal­ly installed in the 1990s. Numer­ous cus­tomiza­tions and work-around man­u­al process­es allowed the team to cir­cum­vent sys­tem lim­i­ta­tions and keep the busi­ness run­ning. How­ev­er use­ful, these stop­gap mea­sures sac­ri­ficed effi­cien­cy and effec­tive functionality.

The Com­pli­ance Perspective

On the com­pli­ance front, at year-end 2021, AUI was fac­ing the expi­ra­tion of a reg­u­la­to­ry exemp­tion to cov­er sys­tem lim­i­ta­tions pre­vent­ing it from ful­ly com­ply­ing with indus­try rule require­ments. AUI oper­ates in a dereg­u­lat­ed, com­pet­i­tive gas sup­ply envi­ron­ment unlike its sis­ter util­i­ty com­pa­nies and it would face reg­u­la­to­ry enforce­ment issues if it did not address its tech­nol­o­gy limitations.

The Ini­tia­tive: Goals and Suc­cess Criteria

IT and busi­ness lead­ers con­tem­plat­ed the need for a new approach and CIS tech­nol­o­gy while they defined key goals and mea­sures for suc­cess. TSU want­ed to meet base require­ments to sup­port the busi­ness and com­ply with indus­try rules.

Goals and Objectives

It also looked to:

• Uni­fy and stream­line cus­tomer infor­ma­tion sys­tem util­i­ties process­es and best prac­tices across its three utilities.

• Lever­age the func­tion­al­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary CIS plat­forms to enhance and improve work process­es and capabilities.
• Sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, includ­ing the prospect of adding flex­i­ble, adapt­able, and respon­sive self-ser­vice options.

Sur­pass­ing Suc­cess Criteria

The mea­sures of suc­cess and the list of per­for­mance indi­ca­tors includ­ed set­ting base­lines and gaug­ing results on the fol­low­ing elements:

• Com­pli­ance mon­i­tor­ing and reporting
• Billing cycle time­li­ness and completeness
• Mar­ket trans­ac­tions in com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­to­ry rules
• Excep­tion man­age­ment vol­umes and durations
• Cus­tomer feed­back, includ­ing sat­is­fac­tion and complaints
• Call cen­ter oper­a­tion statistics

The Solu­tion: Project Part­ner­ship, Tech­nol­o­gy Choice

TSU select­ed Ver­tex­One as its strate­gic CIS part­ner after fol­low­ing a rig­or­ous process to define busi­ness require­ments and issue an RFP. Accord­ing to Mike Stock, AUI Vice Pres­i­dent, Finan­cial Ser­vices & Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs, ​“Ver­tex­One/SAP ranked high as a func­tion­al match,” giv­en the com­plex­i­ties of the project and inte­gra­tion over­all, across the three util­i­ties oper­at­ing in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments and locations.

Ver­tex­One ranked ahead of oth­er options based on func­tion­al match, cost, and over­all busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion. Stock also not­ed that the solu­tion would be a Ver­tex­One host­ed sys­tem that fea­tured high-avail­abil­i­ty and dis­as­ter recov­ery ser­vice-lev­el agree­ments, among oth­er elements.

Ver­tex­One head­ing and info moved here

Specif­i­cal­ly, TSU moved ahead with a trio of Ver­tex­One SaaS solu­tions to help opti­mize meter-to-cash oper­a­tions. At the core is Ver­tex­One VXen­ter­prise™, a CIS appli­ca­tion built on the SAP S/4HANA sys­tem and the SAP HANA in-mem­o­ry data­base to improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and cus­tomer experience.

Why Ver­tex­One and Why Incor­po­rat­ing CIS Sys­tems for Util­i­ties Works

The sys­tem offers seam­less inte­gra­tion with enter­prise SAP solu­tions and VertexOne’s Dig­i­tal suite of solu­tions. Ver­tex­One Dig­i­tal suite includes cus­tomer self-ser­vice por­tal (VXen­gage), mul­ti-chan­nel out­bound com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pref­er­ence cen­ter (VXcom­mu­ni­cate), and online doc­u­ment man­age­ment repos­i­to­ry (VXrepos­i­to­ry).

The VXen­ter­prise solu­tion also includes Ver­tex­One Insight, an inno­v­a­tive solu­tion by Ver­tex­One offer­ing 360-degree view of cus­tomer, premise and ser­vice through quick ref­er­ence pan­els, enabling faster issue res­o­lu­tion and more per­son­al­ized ser­vice for AUI’s end customers. 

The Intro­duc­tion: VertexOne

Ver­tex­One is the rec­og­nized leader in SaaS plat­forms for crit­i­cal busi­ness process­es of util­i­ties across North Amer­i­ca. It helps more effi­cient­ly deliv­er a com­pelling cus­tomer expe­ri­ence through a wide range of inno­v­a­tive ser­vices and solu­tions — includ­ing the Ver­tex­One Com­plete™ SaaS Solu­tion for Util­i­ties com­prised of the cus­tomer infor­ma­tion sys­tem util­i­ties plat­form, Mobile Work­force Man­age­ment (MWM), Meter Data Man­age­ment (MDM), Dig­i­tal Cus­tomer Engage­ment, and now the addi­tion of Smart Dig­i­tal Engage­ment solu­tions and ser­vices.

Ver­tex­One helps util­i­ties reduce the cost to serve cus­tomers, increase oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, improve cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and dri­ve busi­ness agili­ty. Ver­tex­One takes on the heavy lift­ing of keep­ing cur­rent with the rapid pace of tech­nol­o­gy changes through our Ver­tex­One Com­plete™ SaaS offer­ing, so util­i­ties don’t have to — leav­ing our util­i­ty clients more time to focus on core util­i­ty busi­ness while leav­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to us.

Ver­tex­One offer­ings also include, amongst oth­ers, plat­forms for busi­ness process and elec­tron­ic file repositories.

VXen­ter­prise (for­mer­ly known as CIS Enterprise™)

A CIS built on the SAP plat­form offer­ing best prac­tice util­i­ty busi­ness process­es and easy inte­gra­tion to SAP appli­ca­tion ecosystem.

VXen­gage (for­mer­ly Cus­tomer Advantage™)

A web/​mobile cus­tomer self-ser­vice por­tal offer­ing cus­tomers 24×7 access to per­son­al­ized account/​service infor­ma­tion and offer­ing util­i­ty staff a por­tal to man­age the self-ser­vice func­tion­al­i­ty via the util­i­ty admin console.

VXcom­mu­ni­cate (for­mer­ly known as Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Advantage™)

A mul­ti-chan­nel mes­sag­ing solu­tion that allows proac­tive out­bound com­mu­ni­ca­tion via emails, SMS, voice, let­ter, online broad­cast alerts and pro­mo­tion­al campaigns.

VXrepos­i­to­ry (for­mer­ly known as Doc­u­ment Advantage™)

An elec­tron­ic file repos­i­to­ry allow­ing util­i­ty staff and cus­tomers online access to doc­u­ments and media linked to a customer’s account.

VXs­mart (for­mer­ly known as WaterSmart™)

Pro­vides action­able insights from AMI con­sump­tion data, home util­i­ty reports, con­ser­va­tion fea­tures and cost sav­ing recommendations.

For more infor­ma­tion on the TSU sto­ry, Ver­tex­One part­ner­ship, and oth­er offer­ings, con­tact info@​vertexone.​net or vis­it www​.ver​tex​one​.net

The Results: Imple­men­ta­tion Adjust­ments and Benefits

With a sol­id plan in hand, the project kicked off in ear­ly 2020. How­ev­er, the week the project was to start on site, new COVID-19 inter­na­tion­al and local trav­el restric­tions caused the project teams to imme­di­ate­ly reset and piv­ot to vir­tu­al man­age­ment and delivery.

The result? An ini­tial three-week project delay. As AUI’s Mike Stock said, ​“You do your plan­ning at the start, and then you real­ize this isn’t going to work, so there was cer­tain­ly some flux that we had to con­tend with.”

TSU is already see­ing ben­e­fits with the project mov­ing from imple­men­ta­tion to sta­bi­liza­tion, including:

• Sys­tem flex­i­bil­i­ty to accom­mo­date future reg­u­la­to­ry rules and report­ing changes
• Auto­mat­ed process­es that reduce errors
• Improved data ana­lyt­ics to enable time­ly decision-making 
• Improved track­ing of per­for­mance and report­ing that, in turn, sup­ports ongo­ing train­ing and process improvements

On the cus­tomer side, TSU rolled out the ini­tial self-ser­vice fea­tures of Ver­tex­One Dig­i­tal, which allows the util­i­ties’ end cus­tomers self-man­age their noti­fi­ca­tion pref­er­ences. In addi­tion, cus­tomers are see­ing new bill for­mats and improve­ments to bud­get billing pro­grams. Util­i­ty staff now have the abil­i­ty to deliv­er tar­get­ed mes­sag­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions — ver­sus the pre­vi­ous one-size-fits-all functionality.

The Lessons Learned

TSU and Ver­tex­One have rec­og­nized lessons learned and shared wis­dom from the CIS project trenches:

• Have com­pre­hen­sive and detailed plan­ning, then com­mu­ni­cate it, deep and wide across the teams
• Set real­is­tic expec­ta­tions and include ade­quate exper­tise for data con­ver­sion issues and clean-up activities
• Set and com­mu­ni­cate real­is­tic roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties for every­one involved in the project
• Devel­op and pre­pare clear and detailed train­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion well in advance of going live 
• Devel­op and act ear­ly on a tran­si­tion plan to sta­bi­lize after going live
• Don’t pick resources that are avail­able; pick the right peo­ple, expe­ri­ence, exper­tise, and ded­i­ca­tion for the project team.

About ASUG

ASUG is the world’s largest SAP user group orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by a group of vision­ary SAP cus­tomers in 1991. Its mis­sion is to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. ASUG cur­rent­ly serves thou­sands of busi­ness­es via com­pa­ny­wide mem­ber­ships, con­nect­ing more than 130,000 pro­fes­sion­als with net­work­ing and edu­ca­tion­al resources to help them mas­ter new chal­lenges. ASUG helps SAP cus­tomers make more pos­si­ble through in-per­son and vir­tu­al events, on-demand dig­i­tal resources, and ongo­ing advo­ca­cy for its membership. 

ASUG devel­ops and pub­lish­es Case Stud­ies reg­u­lar­ly in part­ner­ship with its mem­bers and cus­tomers. For more infor­ma­tion on ASUG Case Study con­tent, con­tact editorial@​asug.​com.