MITEM for Public Utility Call Centers
In a call center environment,
MitemView pulls customer data from legacy systems and
other disparate back-end systems and presents it to
the client in a Windows, HTML or Macromedia Flash environment.
These composite applications, built with the MitemView
SDK, eliminates the need for customer service representatives
to laboriously access dozens of screens of information,
one by one, to answer a customer inquiry - service reps
can access all the customer information they need with
just a few mouse clicks.
MITEM offers a very attractive alternative
to standard CRM packages for companies that run on legacy
systems. Many public utilities considering using MitemView
report that they don't want to, or cannot afford
to start from scratch with a new and often very expensive
CRM system that may turn out to be totally inappropriate
for their environment. Utility companies want to preserve
and extend the investments they have made in very dependable
legacy assets - and MITEM is often the best solution
for these companies.
Selected
Projects:
Allegheny
Power
Allegheny
formed a team to look into a systems integration solution
for its recently consolidated call center environment.
The business goals included improving
quality and consistency, eliminating manual processes,
improving contact tracking, and
reducing training time. The technical enhancements needed
to reach the business objectives required a system to
front-end its legacy mainframe systems and to extend
integration between those mainframes and the newly implemented
client/server applications used for work management,
outage management, imaging and workflow processes.
Allegheny
Power used Menlo Park, Calif.-based vendor MITEM's product
called
MitemView to create composite applications
from legacy system assets.
Read Chartwell 2002 CIS Case Study
American
Electric Power
American
Electric Power is a multinational energy company based
in Columbus, Ohio. AEP owns and operates more than 38,000
megawatts of generating capacity, making it one of America's
largest generators of electricity.
AEP was reviewing
options for the construction and maintenance of a new
GUI for their CIS. It was determined that using MitemView
would deliver a solution that had substantial performance
and reliability advantages over the original HLLAPI-based
approach. "Because of MitemView's asynchronous architecture
and very high performance, we felt that we could improve
the design of the user interface," commented Mike Rozsa,
IT Manager for Customer Service Applications at AEP.
Read case study
Baltimore
Gas & Electric
Based
on outdated technical underpinnings, BGE's existing
customer information system (CIS) had become a bottleneck
to efficient customer service. Training time for new
call center recruits took 29 weeks because the system
was difficult to learn and time-consuming to use. Customer
inquiries became more complex and the time it took to
access pertinent information to get answers increased.
BGE needed a solution that spanned three critical areas:
cut training time, decrease actual call time and improve
overall processes.
Read case study
Central
Maine Power Company & IntelliRisk Mgmt Corp
CMP realized
that a new business process had to be defined and implemented
to support the corporate goals for improving the customer
service process. Several technical approaches were considered.
Buying a new CIS system was not an option based on the
cost and time for implementation. CMP chose the MitemView
solution because it could support a re engineered call
center workflow, and meet the system performance, budget,
and time constraints.
Read case study
Duquesne
Light
Duquesne Light's
CIS is the in house-branded DISCuS, a PricewaterhouseCoopers-built
system. The utility is using MITEM of Menlo Park, Calif.
The vendor's MitemView product creates composite applications
from legacy system assets.
MITEM committed
to a 30-day implementation for installation and going
live. "The company met its deadline with little
problem," says Tom Larkin, Customer Service Administrator
- Duquesne
Light. Two MitemView developers were sent
to work with Larkin and a part-time Duquesne team; the
30-day implementation including determining the functional
requirements, building the screens and making sure the
system worked was accomplished with the equivalent of
three full time people.
Read Chartwell 2002 CIS Case Study
Oklahoma
Natural Gas Co.
ONG initiated
a call center automation project which concluded that
only minor modifications were required for the billing
and accounting functions of CSS, but significant changes
would be necessary to support the objective to increase
its customer service levels. The automation project
identified the addition of several new features including
an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, screen pops,
and intelligent call routing.
In addition,
the character-based system [CSS] did not offer an easy
way to handle certain transactions such as Order Scheduling,
Billing Adjustments, and Detailed Account Inquiry. For
example, changing an appointment for service or the
follow-up action on a bill was difficult, even for experienced
Customer Service Representatives (CSRs). It was clear
that to support the call center automation initiative,
a re-engineering of the CSS presentation was needed.
Read case study
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