It makes sense. When it comes to business processes involving supply contracts, general ledger or human resource administration, utilities operate much like their own business customers.

But in other areas, utilities are different. Because utility service affects the health, safety and economic well-being of all residents within a jurisdiction, governments hold utilities to unique standards. They look for clear parallels between costs and prices. They reject inequitable customer policies. They demand disclosures, performance standards and penalties that go far beyond those required of most firms.

Utility-specific applications are often the easiest way to address these differences within the IT context. The consequence is widespread use of best-of-breed software applications that handle utility-specific approaches to billing, outages, field crews and assets.

The Past: Limited Integration

In the past, utilities have been forced to integrate these best-of-breed packages on-site. While the process had become easier with the growth of Web-based standards, developing and maintaining those integrations remained costly. Each time one of the applications changed, it was necessary to rework the integrations through which it communicated with other software. The utility-modified programs offered by enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors were no better than best-of-breed software in this regard; many were far worse.

As a result, utilities tended to limit enterprise-wide, integrated business processes. The fewer requirements for integration, they reasoned, the better able they would be to limit the expense of reworking those integrations when one application changed.

Limited integration, of course, defied business process logic. All organizations -- utilities included -- require fused business processes that flow across separate departments and activities, reflecting an organization’s integrated mission. Failing to integrate business processes via software forced manual work-arounds. It created walls between departments and cracks between those walls into which customer data or needed actions could fall. A new customer’s meter might go unread for months. A new business service might not be offered to all who could benefit. Field crews might disconnect a customer for non-payment when in fact the customer had paid.

Clearly, utilities needed a path to cross-organizational business processes.

Orchestrating and Improving Business Processes

Today, that path is emerging. Software vendors are beginning to offer packages of applications that work together as a single entity to address business processes across multiple departments. They are starting to offer packages of pre-integrated, fully interoperable applications that offer the full functionality of the today’s best-of-breed software while also enabling change without costly modifications to integration routines.

The most progressive of this new breed of vendors are taking an additional step. They are using flexible architectures that will enable continuous process improvement and monitoring for process efficiency and effectiveness. They are helping utilities look beyond today’s limited application integration to true Strategic Utility Management, where managers orchestrate multiple business processes across the entire enterprise.

The Benefits

Business process orchestration across multiple departments:

• Reduces errors. Seamless, synchronized data and process handoffs between departments dramatically lower the risk of lost data and ensure that no department acts on outdated information.

• Speeds customer response. Call centers can instantly access all customer contacts, all work on or near a customer premise, and all services a customer uses. That means representatives can answer almost every customer question on the first call.

• Reduces costs. Field crews arrive at the site of a repair or service call with all the right equipment for the tasks plus all the spare parts they can expect to use. And because they report equipment and parts usage immediately, you can not only reorder spare parts promptly but also update equipment maintenance schedules so that warranties remain in force.

• Provides stakeholders with accurate information. By looking simultaneously at, for instance, the outage management, asset management, and mobile workforce systems, you know exactly how many people are working on an outage, where they are, what they’re doing, what equipment they’re using, and how long it will be until service is restored.

• Increases efficiency. Field crews completing emergency repairs move immediately to routine maintenance tasks in the same geographic area. You reduce drive time, fuel, and vehicle wear and tear.

• Eliminates redundancy. You perform each part of a business process just once.

Best of all, interoperable applications and fully orchestrated business processes close the gap between data and decisions. They provide managers and executives with the single, unified, fully up-to-date view that leads directly to Strategic Utility Management.

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