UC ROI in the Utility Industry
This is the fourth of an eight-part weekly series of articles that leads up to the UC Summit 2012 that will take place May 6-9 in La Jolla, CA. See the UC Summit website for more details. Provided by Samantha Kane of Kane-MacKay & Associates, a UCStrategies Expert.
Kane-Mackay & Associates provide many Utilities across North America with people, process and technology advice. The following is a successful case study in the North East of the USA that covered several states with electricity services.
In the Utility industry there are many examples of successful UC ROI. Most vendors think that Utility clients want front door ROI services such as self service to drive costs down, typical driven by a VP of Customer Care and the cost of a center. But working in the utility industry has proven to us that there are many opportunities in the back office to not only drive costs down, but add value, become pro-active rather than reactive and reduce the number of complaints that get sent to a Utility Commission for investigation by understanding the UC and CEBP.
The Utility industry has several areas in their "back office" environment that are very costly, require 7 x 24 staffing and are intense when fired up. One example is their Communication Command Center for Storm Management. The function of this center is to analyze storms in different environmental states, how that is affecting customers, the foot print that the storm is taking and how it changes in service requests from a six-hour footprint into a 24-hour footprint and then a 48 and 72 hour when outages are high, complaints high and communication overwhelming.
Traditionally all set up and delivery, co-ordination and communication have been manual in nature creating an intense schedule with no time to spare. In analyzing this business process it became very apparent that a UC model using conference automation, presence, mobility access and time zone issue trees co-ordination could bring core teams together, automate access to people and documentation, access to Scada operations and the tracking of the storm footprint. This allowed different skillsets to participate from their current positions, bring in experts when needed, historical information on similar storm patterns and provide real-time communications to complaint management and when necessary the commission who monitor these storms and their affect on customers in those particular states. Note this is a Utility that services several states and therefore is monitored by several Commissions, none of which have the same SLA requirements.
The implementation was approached as a phase cut starting with the automation of conference bridges and resource lists, expanded into presence then added mobility, then Scada and finally grid model information and radar tracking to the overall picture.
The end result was a re-assignment of five FTE's per shift (this is a 7 x 24 when in full swing) which meant that over a three-shift period, 12 FTE's were reduced because of the UC success. In dollar value this represents $698,000 a year, addressed any union issues, created efficiencies in the overall operations of this center and reduced operation costs such as licenses, desktop maintenance, etc, by a minimum of 12%. Additionally the number of complaints to both internal sources as well as external sources was tracked by 27.8 %. The average cost of a response to a complaint starts at $300 and can total as much as $1,200 in time and effort. The reduction of outage calls to the call center dropped by 31.5%, therefore reducing the need for outsourcing on storm days, another significant reduction of costs
Using this model, the client has added three more back office areas to this model in Scada, complaints and other forms of internal communications tied to scheduling within distribution. The results cannot be published but exceed the original models stated in this paper.
Any UC vendor reading this paper should acknowledge that understanding the "As is" process and applying common sense and UC tools provides the client with these types of successful "To be" rewards. The key to this particular project was to start small where there was a real pain point to the client and their clients, resulting in Utility Regulatory intervention. All those components made it a great place to start. The next important factor was to take a tight control over the roll out. Having a consultant PM the job helped take pressure off the vendors and gave the client a comfort level they may not have had.
The third factor was being able to have the client fill in the ROI with their own costs and participate in the findings. This provided a sense of ownership to the client with empowerment and accountability. All great results.
Tags
Start YourCustomized Search
SOLUTION AREA
SOLUTION PROVIDERS
- 8x8 (40) Apply 8x8 filter
- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (50) Apply Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise filter
- AT&T (44) Apply AT&T filter
- AudioCodes (49) Apply AudioCodes filter
- Avaya (397) Apply Avaya filter
- Cisco (574) Apply Cisco filter
- Dell (11) Apply Dell filter
- Five9 (54) Apply Five9 filter
- Fuze (39) Apply Fuze filter
- Genesys (100) Apply Genesys filter
- HP (98) Apply HP filter
- IBM (171) Apply IBM filter
- Jabra (9) Apply Jabra filter
- Logitech (56) Apply Logitech filter
- Lumen (4) Apply Lumen filter
- Masergy (50) Apply Masergy filter
- Microsoft (766) Apply Microsoft filter
- Mitel (233) Apply Mitel filter
- NEC (128) Apply NEC filter
- Nectar (58) Apply Nectar filter
- Polycom (95) Apply Polycom filter
- Ramp (37) Apply Ramp filter
- RingCentral (126) Apply RingCentral filter
- Sennheiser (18) Apply Sennheiser filter
- Slack (13) Apply Slack filter
- Tata Communications (59) Apply Tata Communications filter
- Unify (186) Apply Unify filter
- Vonage Business (80) Apply Vonage Business filter
- Yealink (8) Apply Yealink filter
- Zoom (21) Apply Zoom filter
- Acme Packet (24) Apply Acme Packet filter
- Allworx (2) Apply Allworx filter
- Arkadin (22) Apply Arkadin filter
- Aspect (34) Apply Aspect filter
- BT (25) Apply BT filter
- CaféX (8) Apply CaféX filter
- CallTower (14) Apply CallTower filter
- Clarity Connect (10) Apply Clarity Connect filter
- Continuant (1) Apply Continuant filter
- Damaka (4) Apply Damaka filter
- Dialogic (5) Apply Dialogic filter
- Dimension Data (44) Apply Dimension Data filter
- Empirix (11) Apply Empirix filter
- Enghouse Interactive (17) Apply Enghouse Interactive filter
- Inference Solutions (9) Apply Inference Solutions filter
- IntelePeer (27) Apply IntelePeer filter
- IR (11) Apply IR filter
- Jive (21) Apply Jive filter
- Kurmi Software (21) Apply Kurmi Software filter
- Lifesize (33) Apply Lifesize filter
- Lightware (3) Apply Lightware filter
- Mavenir (6) Apply Mavenir filter
- Modality Systems (8) Apply Modality Systems filter
- Momentum (36) Apply Momentum filter
- Netfortris (5) Apply Netfortris filter
- NetSapiens (6) Apply NetSapiens filter
- NewVoiceMedia (31) Apply NewVoiceMedia filter
- Nureva (26) Apply Nureva filter
- NUWAVE (5) Apply NUWAVE filter
- Orange (32) Apply Orange filter
- OVCC (8) Apply OVCC filter
- Panasonic (18) Apply Panasonic filter
- PanTerra Networks (9) Apply PanTerra Networks filter
- ScanSource (21) Apply ScanSource filter
- SIPPIO (3) Apply SIPPIO filter
- Snom (20) Apply Snom filter
- Star2Star (8) Apply Star2Star filter
- StarLeaf (12) Apply StarLeaf filter
- Tadiran Telecom (2) Apply Tadiran Telecom filter
- TekVizion (9) Apply TekVizion filter
- Unimax (7) Apply Unimax filter
- Verint (41) Apply Verint filter
- Voice4Net (2) Apply Voice4Net filter
- VOSS (85) Apply VOSS filter
- Voxbone (14) Apply Voxbone filter
- West (28) Apply West filter
- XO Communications (3) Apply XO Communications filter
- Yorktel (17) Apply Yorktel filter
- Zultys (2) Apply Zultys filter
- 3CX (8) Apply 3CX filter
- ADDASOUND (1) Apply ADDASOUND filter
- Aerohive (1) Apply Aerohive filter
- Aryaka (1) Apply Aryaka filter
- Asurion (22) Apply Asurion filter
- Avnet (7) Apply Avnet filter
- Bandwidth (5) Apply Bandwidth filter
- Calabrio (5) Apply Calabrio filter
- Consilium Software (13) Apply Consilium Software filter
- Drum (5) Apply Drum filter
- ESI (6) Apply ESI filter
- Esna (16) Apply Esna filter
- Exinda (2) Apply Exinda filter
- EZuce (3) Apply EZuce filter
- GUnify (6) Apply GUnify filter
- Highfive (4) Apply Highfive filter
- Huawei (47) Apply Huawei filter
- Imagicle (3) Apply Imagicle filter
- IPCortex (1) Apply IPCortex filter
- KnoahSoft (1) Apply KnoahSoft filter
- KOVA (1) Apply KOVA filter
- Logmein (9) Apply Logmein filter
- Metropolis Technologies (4) Apply Metropolis Technologies filter
- Mutare (2) Apply Mutare filter
- NextPlane (27) Apply NextPlane filter
- Ooma (16) Apply Ooma filter
- Patton (11) Apply Patton filter
- Radish Systems (1) Apply Radish Systems filter
- Radisys (3) Apply Radisys filter
- Shango (1) Apply Shango filter
- SMART (163) Apply SMART filter
- Stack8 (1) Apply Stack8 filter
- Swyx (1) Apply Swyx filter
- TrueConf (4) Apply TrueConf filter
- UJET (13) Apply UJET filter
- Voximplant (3) Apply Voximplant filter
CONTENT TYPE
- BC Expert Insights Market (43) Apply BC Expert Insights Market filter
- BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral (42) Apply BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral filter
- BC Expert Insights Planning (15) Apply BC Expert Insights Planning filter
- BC Expert Insights Solution (12) Apply BC Expert Insights Solution filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor (80) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution (145) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution filter
- BC Expert Roundtable (133) Apply BC Expert Roundtable filter
- Bcs Webinar (0)
- Bcs Webinar Registration (0)
- Best Practice (38) Apply Best Practice filter
- Buyer Guide (14) Apply Buyer Guide filter
- Case Study (29) Apply Case Study filter
- Executive Interview (145) Apply Executive Interview filter
- Expert Roundtable (450) Apply Expert Roundtable filter
- Guest Contributions (35) Apply Guest Contributions filter
- Multimedia (38) Apply Multimedia filter
- News Analysis (2081) Apply News Analysis filter
- Newsfeed Article (1303) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Newsfeed Article (1) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Thought Leadership (21) Apply Thought Leadership filter
- Vendor Collateral (211) Apply Vendor Collateral filter
- Vendor Resource Best Practices (24) Apply Vendor Resource Best Practices filter
- Vendor Resource Buyers Guides (2) Apply Vendor Resource Buyers Guides filter
- Vendor Resource Multimedia Content (4) Apply Vendor Resource Multimedia Content filter
- Vendor Resource White Paper (4) Apply Vendor Resource White Paper filter
- Webinar (13) Apply Webinar filter
- Webinars (7) Apply Webinars filter
- White Paper (64) Apply White Paper filter
MORE FILTERS
INDUSTRY
- Banking And Investment (800) Apply Banking And Investment filter
- Education (446) Apply Education filter
- Energy And Utilities (487) Apply Energy And Utilities filter
- Finance (12) Apply Finance filter
- Government (675) Apply Government filter
- Healthcare (482) Apply Healthcare filter
- Hospitality (180) Apply Hospitality filter
- Insurance (100) Apply Insurance filter
- Manufacturing (704) Apply Manufacturing filter
- Media/Publishing (422) Apply Media/Publishing filter
- None (43) Apply None filter
- Professional Services (745) Apply Professional Services filter
- Retail & Distribution (798) Apply Retail & Distribution filter
- Technology (1611) Apply Technology filter
- Transportation (110) Apply Transportation filter
Comments
There are currently no comments on this article.
You must be a registered user to make comments