• Enterprise Mobile Workforce Management Software improves field tech productivity by 67 percent on first day
ATLANTA, GA, Oct. 13, 2008 -- Ventyx®, the world's largest private software provider to the energy and utility industry, announced that the City of Charlotte has rolled out Ventyx Service Suite enterprise mobile workforce management solution to improve the productivity and efficiency of its mobile field service workforce. The city implemented a baseline integration of Service Suite with its existing Ventyx Customer Suite customer information system (CIS)/billing solution, further automating and optimizing its ability to serve a growing customer base while streamlining business processes.
The City, which provides water, sewer and stormwater services to a population of more than 750,000 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, has integrated the solutions to take advantage of enhanced functionality in the areas of usability and improved communication between customer service representatives and service technicians in the field. The integration further improved inefficient processes related to scheduling, distributing and working service order requests -- including closing service orders in the field and automatically updating the customer billing record. Furthermore, because the City implemented a baseline integration from Ventyx, future enhancements to either solution can easily be incorporated without requiring costly custom integration development.
Combining mobile workforce management with the utility's CIS has already yielded improved levels of customer service while also significantly reducing the costs of service delivery. "We have experienced tremendous improvements by utilizing Service Suite, with unprecedented levels of productivity from our dispatchers and field technicians," said Chip Harris, Business Systems Division Manager with the City of Charlotte. "Previously, on a good day we would complete around 300 service orders. On the first day with Service Suite, we completed more than 500 orders -- an increase in productivity of 67 percent!"
The Service Suite system is also helping the City's field techs utilize their time to execute the orders much more efficiently. According to Harris, "Before, the techs could spend an hour to an hour and a half in the office waiting for paper service orders to be prepared for them to go out into the field. Now, we can get everyone out in the field immediately after they clock in and gather their equipment. They spend more of their time in the field completing tasks, which improves employee morale as well as efficiency. Employees are always happier when they know what they're doing is adding value to the organization. At the end of the first week, one of the City's techs said, 'I have my own laptop in my own truck. I feel like I'm in my own office and really getting some work done!'"
The solution is also positively impacting the city's bottom line. According to Harris, "We are very confident that our new systems and improved processes will result in more than $1 million in efficiency improvements annually once we deploy the solution across all service orders."
Ventyx President and CEO Vince Burkett said, "We are grateful to the City of Charlotte for allowing Ventyx to partner with them on this very important initiative. The City of Charlotte is the perfect example of a utility that is generating new and deeper value by optimizing the various business processes that drive efficient service delivery -- from the call center to the field to the monthly billing statement -- through baseline integration of Ventyx solutions. Our ability to drive this efficiency across the service chain is why Ventyx holds a large market share in customer and service management with more than 100 utilities now utilizing our CIS solution and more than 100,000 licensed mobile users of our Service Suite worldwide."
The Ventyx Service Suite solution for enterprise mobile workforce management provides a complete infrastructure to efficiently plan, schedule and execute all types of field work. Service Suite automates the service workflow end-to-end -- from scheduling and optimization of order assignment, to dissemination of work to the field, order processing and performance measurement. Service Suite removes barriers to distributing work across organizational or geographic boundaries, enabling companies to increase operational efficiencies and heighten productivity, while optimizing performance and improving internal controls to reduce costs. The solution improves customer satisfaction through increased data accuracy, optimized service delivery and shorter emergency response and resolution times.
The largest public water and wastewater utility in the Carolinas, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities proudly serves more than 750,000 customers in the City of Charlotte and greater Mecklenburg County -- including the towns of Matthews, Mint Hill, Pineville, Huntersville, Davidson and Cornelius.
Ventyx is a leading business solutions provider, delivering asset management, mobile workforce management, customer care, energy trading and risk management, energy operations, and energy analytics solutions to more than 900 energy, utility and communications customers, as well as to asset-intensive customers in selected commercial markets.
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