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Success Story: Northern Indiana Public Service Co.

The prospect of selling an in-house operated mobile data dispatching and field service solution to Hammond, IN-based Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) was no simple challenge when Utility Partners' then-Midwest Regional Sales Director first approached the company with Utility Partners' MobileUP mobile computing solution.

After several years of being slashed from the utility's annual budget review process, NIPSCO finally approved hosting an RFP (Request For Proposal) from outside IT vendors to automate and maintain a mobile data dispatching and field service solution. Said Utility Partners' Sales Director, "Their (NIPSCO's) objectives were those that our solution meets: better response of service, elimination of redundant data entry, overall reduction in overtime, enhanced customer satisfaction…all standard things provided by the MobileUP system."

But even though a ray of light had begun to shine, it only served to reveal another hurdle. A competitive bidder – who happened to be an "IBM Business Partner" – was also vying for the utility's mobile data business. Now Utility Partners was competing against a vendor that not only had a functionally similar product, but also an inside track going into the bidding process!

Finally, in September 1997, Utility Partners signed a contract with NIPSCO to automate its service dispatching and field processing operations with its MobileUP computing system, thus overcoming both the internal and external obstacles it had originally encountered.

So how did Utility Partners win the business away from the IBM business partner that it was competing against? "I think it was the price…we didn't have a large overhead…and I think our product and services were better as well," said Utility Partners' Sales Director. "Also, our company was perceived as a leading solutions provider in the utility industry."

A fast turnaround in ROI may have also played a strong role in validating the company's IT investment. "We implemented the first live users in June of '98, and roll-out was completed in 13 local operating offices by February of '99. They really didn't expect an ROI until at least 1999, but by the end of 1998 they were already recognizing an ROI from those offices that had been installed for months," UP's Sales Director said.

"Where you really see the ROI benefits immediately is in the back-office: printing, sorting, data-entry of completions," said UP Project Director Don Breitweiser. "You see improvements especially in customer service, in that completion information is updated in CIS immediately and not up to two weeks later." Also, meeting customer appointments has enhanced customer satisfaction, thanks to MobileUP's advanced scheduling and dispatching features.

Breitweiser added that MobileUP has also centralized the utility's dispatching function, and reduced the number of dispatchers from 31 dispatchers to 25. "There was a real, measurable head-count reduction in the dispatch staff.

"The utility is also getting more accurate data returned from the field. If, for example, a meter reading is incorrectly recorded, the technician can fix it while still on-premise rather than the error not being caught until someone tries to enter it at the back-office, and then someone has to return to the premise to gather the correct information," Breitweiser added.

Utility Partners' MobileUP system is a feature-rich tool for dispatching outage or trouble orders – as well as daily system-generated or regulatory-required service orders – in a manner that is both efficient and cost effective. MobileUP's versatile scheduling and dispatching functions allow dispatchers to respond immediately to trouble situations by enabling the fast reallocation of available resources qualified to work. MobileUP makes this possible by querying the current assignment status of all service technicians within a certain geographical area, and comparing the skill-sets of technicians from a table-driven database, to determine the technician(s) best qualified to work the trouble order.

Aside from the pricing and functionality aspects, Breitweiser also cited the "human factor" as another important element in winning NIPSCO's business. "NIPSCO is a relationship, service-oriented company, and I think the service relationship that Utility Partners had built exceeded what the competition had offered."

"Our rollout was an ambitious one," said NIPSCO Service Operations Thomas D. Retseck. "We now have 230 users on board in our Service Departments and are preparing to roll out to our Electric Meter and Electric Line Departments after we install the newest MobileUP release (5.2). With such an ambitious schedule, we have called upon Utility Partners' assistance multiple times and have appreciated the partnership that has developed in getting us through the problems that always develop with large projects," Retseck added.

NIPSCO's main office is in Hammond, Indiana, with large service centers located in Gary, Ft. Wayne, and South Bend. The utility's operations extend to within 40 miles of Indianapolis, and include 416,000 electric and 700,000 gas customers. The number of service vehicles fitted with mobile data terminals numbers 230.

Utility Partners, Inc. provides software solutions exclusively for the gas, electric and water utility industries, including mobile computing, work management and gas management. The company's customer list includes utilities throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. For more information call UP at 1-800-280-8828. You can also visit the company's Website at www.utilpart.com.

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