The Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) manages the largest and oldest system of its kind in New England, providing drinking water and sewer services to more than one million people daily.

BWSC was using a legacy Customer Information System, based on Ingres Database, and built in the 1980s. Right after they went live with it, the company that designed it all folded, and BWSC was left managing the system themselves.

Main Challenges they encountered:

• No documentation around the business processes that were built into the code,
• The system was completely built on exceptions,
• Very little integration between the system and the other systems of BWSC,
• Data could only be integrated in other systems one day later,
• Most of the Subject Matter Experts in the old system were on the verge of retiring.

Itineris and UMAX were chosen after an extensive selection process to determine the best solution across BWSC’s meter-to-cash, customer service, mobile work management, and business intelligence requirements.

These were the main criteria BWSC used to select Itineris and UMAX:

• The technology platform – which should be modern and configurable,
• The possibility to integrate with other systems (GIS, ERP, Automatic Meter Reading, …),
• The cost of ownership,
• The possibility to build a relationship with the vendor and make sure they can remain on board after the implementation, to help them support the system.

Thanks to the implementation of UMAX, Customer Engagement has increased while the total number of Customer Calls coming in and the time CSRs are spending on the phone with customers has significantly been reduced. Besides that, the most common and time-consuming manual business processes have been optimized:

• Thanks to the integration with other systems (GIS, Automatic Meter Reading, …), BWSC can now stay up-to-date on reporting,
• By introducing electronic work orders they can now efficiently organize and manage fieldwork,
• BWSC’s Customer Service Representatives now have a simplified view to get all information they need when a customer calls – right at their fingertips,
• The Customer Self Service Portal allows their customers to see data around consumption & billing, and sign up for customer notifications,
• BWSC can now produce e-bills instead of paper bills.