SOA Bright Idea for Southside Electric Cooperative
Description
- SOA solution for integrating disparate systems
Business Needs
- Integrate mobile workforce, call center and office “real time”
- Eliminate inconsistencies between systems
- Increase productivity and customer service response times
Software
- IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker
- IBM WebSphere MQ
- IBM WebSphere Business Integration Adapters
- IBM WebSphere Portal Express
Hardware
CLIENT BACKGROUND
Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC) is a not-for-profit, member-owned electric distribution cooperative that was incorporated in 1937. Geographically, SEC is the largest rural electric cooperative in Virginia, and provides electric service to more than 52,484 active meters in portions of 18 counties, 5 towns and one city over some 8,015 miles of line in South Central Virginia. The Cooperative has four district offices, is active in economic development and maintains a good community relations program.
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Facing significant data integrity challenges attributed to the implementation of several new software applications over the past 5 years, SEC’s problem magnified as they looked to implement a QUALCOMM satellite communications mobile data solution for the field personnel.
To maintain high level customer service as well as conduct day-to-day business, SEC utilized several different critical applications on different platforms, utilizing six disparate databases, and all needing to share information with each other. Lack of integration required data to be manually entered (service orders were paper-based) which was both labor and time intensive and led to inconsistent and error prone data. This led to management concerns, customer frustration, and damage control by Public Relations.
SOLUTION
Prolifics, using WebSphere Message Broker, MQ and the Business Integration Adapters, implemented a SOA solution for SEC that seamlessly integrated their Daffron customer information system with their ESRI geographical information system and Hunt Technologies automated meter reading systems, allowing the lineman in the field and office personnel to share data “real time.”
By having an integrated, centralized view of all the systems, SEC has saved time, improved the productivity of its employees and boosted customer service. Information gathered from the field is updated across all systems in real time – straight from the bus. Data is now shared, consistent, accurate and up-to-date.
The utility estimates that the greater efficiencies will help reduce service work from one week to two days or less. Without the need for redundant data entry across multiple applications, the utility has been able to reallocate resources to more critical tasks and eliminate the need to hire additional personnel for the call center – a major cost savings. SEC also reports 30% more collections per day. The QUALCOMM mobile data solution that includes the SOA implementation also brought a reduction in insurance costs as well as simplifying Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reporting, enabling rapid recovery of funds by decreasing report generation to days down from weeks.
SEC won the 2006 Cooperative Innovators Award for the QUALCOMM mobile data solution which includes the SOA solution that Prolifics implemented. SOA has enabled them to handle the unexpected, allowing the company to be more agile and responsive – a critical component when you are responsible for “keeping the lights on.”
Reflecting on the impact of QUALCOMM mobile data solution including SOA, Linda Easter Davis, Information Systems Supervisor states “This is the single most important business improvement we have implemented in the 20 years that I have been here.”