Printer Friendly
The Free Library
5,669,962 articles and books
Member login
User name  
Password 
 
Join us Forgot password?

Alaska's Largest Water Utility Launches New Era in Customer Service with Indus Service Delivery Management; Anchorage Water & Wastewater Replaces Mainframe with Web-based SDM Solution.


ATLANTA -- Indus International Inc. (NASDAQ NASDAQ
 in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations

U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on
: IINT), a leading Service Delivery Management (SDM SDM - Schematic Data Model ) solution provider, today announced the rollout of a new Indus SDM solution at Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility (AWWU AWWU Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility ), successfully replacing the utility's antiquated mainframe-based system with a highly accessible and flexible Web-based application See Web application.  for customer service and billing.

Alaska's largest water and wastewater utility, AWWU installed the new Indus customer information system (CIS Cis (sĭs), same as Kish (1.)


(1) (CompuServe Information Service) See CompuServe.

(2) (Card Information S
) as part of an aggressive initiative to provide world-class customer service to its 55,000 customers. AWWU recognized the urgent need to install newer, more advanced technology that is less expensive to maintain and more flexible in order to adapt to evolving technology and customer expectations. The new Indus solution met these goals by providing a Web-based platform that provides customer service account representatives with efficient access to diverse customer information. Through its open architecture, the solution also provides streamlined integration to key third-party systems such as interactive voice recognition and online service options for customers.

"A new era has begun at AWWU," said John J. McAleenan Jr., manager of AWWU's Customer Service Division. "We have always been committed to providing customers with superior service, and today we have the cutting-edge CIS solution to match this commitment. Indus' comprehensive CIS provides highly advanced billing capabilities, and it goes 'beyond the bill' to help us manage all aspects of customer service, providing all the processes and information we need to quickly respond to our customers' needs."

"Progressive utilities like AWWU recognize that yesterday's standalone CIS is not adequate to meet the demands of today's technology-savvy customer," said Indus Executive Vice President of Field Operations John Gregg John Gregg can refer to the following people:
  • John Robert Gregg (1867–1948), Inventor of Gregg Shorthand
  • John Gregg (CSA) (1828–1864), Confederate general
  • John Irvin Gregg (1826–1892), Union general
. "Customers want options in how they interact with their utility, whether online or by voice or with a human being on the phone or in person, and the customer information system needs to support an optimal customer experience regardless of the medium. That's why we designed our solution with not only the most functional depth, but also an advanced architecture to provide flexibility and connectivity across the enterprise."

Indus' industry-leading solution provides a wealth of customer care features, managing all information for new and returning customers and tracking all customer contacts from initiation to resolution. The system goes far beyond a simple CIS, providing the following key features:

--Service orders -- Creates, assigns and manages service orders, offering committed appointment times and tracking status of work in progress.

--Service levels -- Offers service level agreements (SLAs) to manage service level performance, while integrating workflow, work routing and approval.

--Multiple call centers -- Monitors, tracks and analyzes call center traffic across multiple call centers and administration locations.

--Web portals -- Provides personalized per·son·al·ize  
tr.v. per·son·al·ized, per·son·al·iz·ing, per·son·al·iz·es
1. To take (a general remark or characterization) in a personal manner.

2. To attribute human or personal qualities to; personify.
 Web portals See portal.  for reps offering easy access to answers to customer questions. Also offers customer self-service portals for account information, profile updates, bill preview and payments.

--Strategic services -- Sorts customers for targeted communications and models rates and custom contracts for unique customers. Offers and manages "customer choice" options in deregulated utility areas. Enrolls customers and automatically handles provisioning, pricing and contract renewals.

Teamwork Delivers Smooth Implementation

The Indus SDM solution provided more than just an answer to AWWU's customer management needs. It also proved to be one of the smoothest implementations the utility has experienced, despite upgrading from one version of Indus software to a newer version in the middle of the implementation. The project team composed of customer service and IT experts from AWWU, Indus and implementation partner Resource Data Inc. (RDI RDI - Receiver Data Interface ) put the old system to rest and completed data conversion, data entry and daily balancing on the new system in September 2005. According to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 AWWU's McAleenan, everything worked as planned.

"Statistically, about 35 percent of all CIS implementation projects fail, so we knew we had a long, arduous road ahead of us," concluded McAleenan. "But, everyone here, in combination with the support we received from Indus and RDI, made this go-live implementation a true success story. Project managers from all three companies agreed it was the smoothest implementation they had seen, especially for a system of this size and complexity."

About Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU)

AWWU is the largest water and wastewater utility in Alaska serving Anchorage, Chugiak-Eagle River, Peters Creek Peters Creek is a small river in San Mateo County, California and is a tributary of Pescadero Creek.[1] Tributaries
  • Evans Creek
  • Lambert Creek
  • Bear Creek
Notes

1. ^ USGS, 09-20-07
, Eklutna and Girdwood. The Utility collects water from two major surface watersheds, Eklutna Lake and Ship Creek Ship Creek is an Alaskan river that flows from the Chugach Mountains into Cook Inlet. The Port of Anchorage at the mouth of Ship Creek gave its name ("Knik Anchorage") to the city of Anchorage that grew up nearby. , and several deep underground wells. AWWU has more than 54,580 water customer accounts which equates to an approximate population base of 216,800 residents. The Utility's three wastewater facilities serves approximately 54,520 residential, commercial and military accounts. The public's investment in these treatment plants, water and sewer mains, laboratories and reservoirs is more than $700 million.

About Indus International

Indus is a leading Service Delivery Management (SDM) solution provider, helping clients in a broad array of industries optimize the management of their customers, workforce, spare parts Spare parts, also referred to as Service Parts is a term used to indicate extra parts available and in proximity to the mechanical item, such as a automobile, boat, engine, for which they might be used.

Spare parts are also called “spares.
 inventory, tools and documentation in order to maximize performance and customer satisfaction while achieving significant cost savings. Indus customer, asset and workforce management Workforce Management (WFM) encompasses all the responsibilities for maintaining a productive and happy workforce. Sometimes referred to as HRMS systems, or even the larger ERP systems (Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP). There are many software vendors within this space.  software products, professional services (job) professional services - A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.  and hosted service offerings improve our clients' profitability by reducing costs, increasing capacity and competitiveness, improving service to their customers, facilitating billing for services and ensuring regulatory compliance. Indus solutions have been purchased by more than 400 companies in more than 40 countries, representing diverse industries -- including manufacturing, utilities, telecommunications, government, education, transportation, facilities and property management, consumer packaged goods Noun 1. packaged goods - groceries that are packaged for sale
foodstuff, grocery - (usually plural) consumer goods sold by a grocer

plural, plural form - the form of a word that is used to denote more than one
 and more. For more information, visit our Website at http://www.indus.com.

Indus is a registered trademark of Indus International, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Business Wire
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

 Reader Opinion

Title:

Comment:



 

Article Details
Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Comment:Alaska's Largest Water Utility Launches New Era in Customer Service with Indus Service Delivery Management; Anchorage Water & Wastewater Replaces Mainframe with Web-based SDM Solution.
Publication:Business Wire
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Dec 13, 2005
Words:924
Previous Article:Reliability Guru Ricky Smith Joins Ivara Corporation; Leading Figure in Reliability and Maintenance Industry Named Reliability Strategy Leader.
Next Article:Toshiba to Collaborate With Sarnoff On Protecting ICs from CDM Electrostatic Discharge; New Silicon IP Solution Addresses Growing Industry Concern.
Topics:



Related Articles
Largest Alaska Water Utility Selects Indus Solution to Drive World-Class Customer Service; Banner Advantage CIS and CRM Essentials to Replace...
Welcome to Anchorage, Alaska: NEHA's 68th Annual Educational Conference & Exhibition.
Cobb County Water System Invests in Indus Software Solutions to Provide Customer Service Excellence; Providing the Next Level Of Service to Customer...
Addition of Wishbone broadens Indus SDM appeal.(Supplier News)
General Environmental Health Educational Program.(Educational Content)
City of Charlotte Automates Service Delivery to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Costs; Water Utility Expands Indus Solution as Part of...
Inaugural Utilities Field Service Conference Spotlights Growing Demand for Service Delivery Management Solutions; Indus Customers and Executives Play...
ONEOK's Oklahoma Natural Gas Company Streamlines Operations and Improves Customer Service with Indus Customer Suite.
Eastern Municipal Water District Chooses Indus Solution to Help Serve Rapidly Expanding Customer Base.
Sharing environmental health practice in the North American Arctic: a focus on water and wastewater service.(Special Report)(Author abstract)

Terms of use | Copyright © 2009 Farlex, Inc. | Feedback | For webmasters | Submit articles