Information Technology Can Boost Customer Service

Today?s water and wastewater utilities are being held to extremely high standards in many circles. Tax and ratepayer expectations have increased substantially, government regulations are increasingly stringent and customers are demanding greater care and quality. All of these areas have made utilities aware that they must be more efficient and competitive in all aspects of their business.

Integrated enterprise-wide systems are one of the key principles that will be used in the future to distinguish a world-class competitive utility. Integrated systems take advantage of information technology (IT) to achieve enterprise-wide (i.e., utility-wide) business objectives such as improved customer service, increased productivity and the effective implementation of new regulations.

To achieve this success, utility IT systems must function as readily accessible information ?reservoirs? that permit the rapid sharing of information among all the departments and section units that need to coordinate their efforts more efficiently. Rapid sharing of information is largely enabled through the implementation of a set of data management technologies that in total bring about the achievement of what commonly is termed a utility-wide common database which supports the delivery of information that is:

Accurate, timely and logically consistent
Based upon business requirements
Clearly understood by users
Shared by all application systems
Independent of specific IT technologies.

The utility-wide common database allows the sharing of data between a water or wastewater utility?s application systems, such as GIS, customer service and maintenance management. The design of a such a database is largely dependent on the successful development of a utility-wide information model.

The time-proven path to utility-wide integrated information systems could be highlighted as follows:

Construct the utility-wide information model for your utility, including the organization of information to be dispersed via the web;
Use the model as an architectural blueprint for information, design and implement the utility-wide common database;
Taking advantage of the newly implemented ?reservoir? of information, develop and link those applications that inject critical information into business and operational decision-making processes.

Benefits of the Common Database

The utility-wide common database provides the foundation for integrating IT systems. Some of most significant projected business process improvements are listed below:

Benefits of the Common Database

Customer Services will be able to access current, accurate asset and service information necessary to rapidly respond to customer complaints and generate, route and track work orders electronically.
Through integration with GIS, assets can be associated with the customers they serve, aiding both customer service and rate analysis.
GIS spatial functions will also enable the presentation and analysis of flood planning, operational modeling and water quality data by flood zones and other types of spatial delineations.
By sharing a common asset definition, data for assets built or modified by capital improvement and other projects can quickly be defined in the maintenance management system.
Likewise, asset maintenance history and status will be available to aid in project planning and design.

Stay With Standards

Any IT system planning process needs to incorporate industry standards, such as the UBA (the Utility Business Architecture, created under the auspices of the American Water Works Association) and the UCA (the Utility Communications Architecture, created under the auspices of the American Water Works Association and the Electric Power Research Institute), into the process. It also may need to incorporate the relevant aspects of universal business and operations information standards, such as the business architecture standards recently created by the OMG (the Object Management Group, which sponsored the development of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture or CORBA) or the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium, which is driving data format standards for web-enabled applications).

Stay With Standards

However, utility managers need to understand that standards such as the UBA or the UCA on the one hand, and the utility-wide information model on the other, provide distinctly different types of specifications for the implementation and integration of information systems. The UBA and the UCA are concerned primarily with the utility?s business functions and processes. Much like the information model, the purpose of both the UBA and UCA is to guide the architecture of IT applications systems to achieve utility-wide integration. The information model is concerned with the topology or structure of the data itself.

The Role of the Model

Just as a new building or pumping plant needs to be planned and designed before it can be built, information systems also need careful planning and design. ?Information? is the strategic foundation of information technology. Information captures the descriptions and measurements of the utility?s water quality planning and delivery operations, as well as the transactions with its customers. It also provides critical measures of the effectiveness and efficiency with which a utility is allocating resources and making long-range planning decisions.

The Role of the Model

The information model defines the raw material (data) from which the ?information? in information systems is created, as well as how that raw material needs to be organized to serve information needs of managers and staff. In essence, the information model serves the same function in the design and building of IT systems as project drawings perform in the design and construction of a new building or pumping plant. The role of the information model is to clearly define that goal?a clear, non-redundant statement of the meaning and structure of the data the utility needs to conduct its business.

The Role of the Model

In summary, the major benefits of the information model include:

The Role of the Model

Serving as a blueprint for the design of databases to enable data to be shared among business functions and future applications;
Enabling a global understanding of the data by utility staff and management;
Enabling modularity, extensibility and flexibility of databases and application systems by insulating data from the implementation technology;
Enabling evaluation of off-the-shelf application packages to determine how well they meet the business requirements;
Providing the foundation for effective integration of information systems, including the integration of off-the-shelf application packages with specific applications developed solely for the utility.