Gas & Electric Company Case Study

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Client:
One of the largest utility companies in the Midwest, providing service to more than 706,000 electric customers and more than 687,000 natural gas customers in a 10,600 square-mile area.

Strategic Opportunity:
The utility company issued a request for bids to handle their extensive backlog of electric and gas work orders. The work orders varied in format for each service district and the backlog contained orders covering more than a four-year period. Apex was chosen as the preferred provider based on its competitive price and quick turnaround.

Key Challenge:
The client's challenge for success on this project was that it represented the building of a critical information foundation and was a key step toward achieving safety and efficiency across the enterprise. Apex recognized this challenge as complex and non-traditional, yet its collective knowledge and expertise in G/Technology provided a significant plus in dramatically reducing the learning curve and the risk to the client that a typical GIS conversion provider would face at the start of the project.

Apex CoVantage Solution:
Apex began the backlog conversions by remotely accessing the client's production database via Citrix, a COTS solution for remote access. Using this solution, Apex created jobs within the G/Technology environment, where all of the changes identified in the work orders were performed using G/Technology tools. Each job was then reviewed, accepted and posted by the client. This setup allowed them to continue to use the production database while simultaneously enabling Apex to incorporate the work order backlogs.

Result:
The client was able to significantly reduce its huge work order backlog and address a major safety issue for its field crew. Apex converted over 30,000 work orders within six months and helped the client to meet its 2005 first quarter goals of eliminating the work order backlog.