Itineris Customer: Lansing Board of Water and Light

Opportunity

Lansing Board of Water & Light (BWL) is Michigan’s largest municipal electric utility and provides the state capital, Lansing, and the sprawling Michigan State University campus, with electricity, water, and steam services. In 2018, the BWL issued an RFP for a state-of-the-art customer information system (CIS) to replace their aging legacy system, which was more than 30 years old, highly customized, challenging to learn, expensive to maintain, poorly integrated, and not a real-time system. The CIS replacement project would impact all aspects of BWL’s customer experience—from billing to mobile work management to customer care—and was viewed as an opportunity to fundamentally redefine how the BWL interacts with its customers.

water
Elec
0
ACCOUNTS
0
PEOPLE SERVED
0
UMAX USERS

Solution

Following a thorough RFP process, the BWL selected Itineris’ cloud-based UMAX CIS, built upon the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform. This modern CIS would equip them with:

  • Cashiering
  • Customer self-service portal
  • Business intelligence
  • Electronic billing and payment presentment functionality
  • A mobile workforce management system

UMAX would consolidate functions that had been supported by several disparate systems for years. Following the selection and prior to contract execution, Itineris led a series of workshops in the design phase to gather BWL’s requirements, ensuring an ironclad operating model and seamless data migration to the new system.

The last CIS software BWL would ever need

Typically, CIS systems require costly and stressful software and hardware upgrades over the lifespan of the product. At end of life, a utility will have to replace the product altogether. By selecting UMAX, BWL future-proofed their investment. Because UMAX is built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, BWL experiences iterative updates using One-V, Microsoft’s automated versioning service for updating Microsoft’s standard platform and applications in customer environments. The platform is constantly evolving, delivered via a SaaS model in the Microsoft Azure Cloud, and is fortified with Microsoft products and cyber security.

100% out-of-the-box solution

BWL requested and received a standard UMAX product implementation without any significant customizations

3 weeks VS 2 months

of training for a CSR to learn UMAX and independently assist a customer

VERSUS

on BWL’s legacy system

Challenges

Challenges to meet the project go-live deadline

The implementation team had to overcome a number of challenges:

  • Development and cutover of the system during height of the COVID-19 pandemic. After March 2020, the Itineris delivery team was never able to return onsite.
  • In addition to the CIS replacement, the BWL was simultaneously implementing several other major systems, including AMI, GIS, and ADMS.
  • The legacy CIS had been in place for more than 30 years, during which time the programming and logic had been updated, tweaked, and reconfigured countless times.
  • There was only one original legacy CIS programmer on staff to assist with the conversion to UMAX.
  • Primarily remote interaction for implementation and employee UMAX training.

Despite these challenges, the implementation team completed cutover and go-live remotely, on schedule, and on-budget to a high standard of quality.

Results

Since the June 1, 2021 go-live of the system, BWL has identified numerous operational efficiencies as a direct result of implementing the UMAX solution.

Today, BWL has access to:

  • Real-time data
  • Real-time reporting
  • Real-time payments
  • Highly automated systems and business processes, all of which will save ratepayers money over time

Noteworthy efficiencies realized due to their UMAX CIS include:

  • Automated move/in, move/outs via the robust UMAX customer self-service portal
  • Elimination of manual billing
  • Improved customer communications via SMS messaging and emails
  • Automatic workflows
  • Field services/work order automation
  • Automated meter reads from the MDM system
  • Fully automated collection calls and letters
  1. Increased customer communication, satisfaction, and flexibility
    with real-time information, self-service options, and first contact resolutions to meet their needs and expectations.
  2. Increased employee job satisfaction
    through technology-enabled business process efficiencies.
  3. Process improvements
    through built-in workflows, and accurate and timely reports to ensure data driven decision making.
  4. A secure & reliable cloud-based system
    that is easy to use and maintain.
  5. Adoption of industry best practices
    to better position BWL with utility industry leaders.
  6. Alignment with BWL’s strategic goal
    to implement new technology, to push forward with its vision of becoming the Utility of the Future.

71%

ADOPTION OF CSS
(Customer Self-Service)

and climbing within the first year of availability

32%

Auto-pay Enrollment

Convenient for customers and ensures on-time payments to BWL

Instant

service restoration

BWL customers can now restore their service within minutes of making an overdue payment, 24/7, 365.

~10%

project savings

Actual costs to implement UMAX ended up being nearly 10 percent under budget due to travel and process efficiencies.

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