The City of Tulsa Public Works Division is the first large utility organization in North American to begin using the new Custima™ Billing and Customer Information System (CIS), which interfaces to meter reading, general ledger, point of sale, automated clearing house, bill print, accounts payable and lockbox systems.
The system was provided by DST lnnovis, formerly CableData Inc., and Custima International plc.
"Public Works and DST Innovis worked closely together as a team to ensure that the implementation was seamless to our customer," said Mike Buchert, assistant public works director for the City of Tulsa. "Installing a new system is not an easy endeavor. However, we used a collaborative effort to implement a fully scaleable customer service system and have achieved great success."
The system went live in October after a two-year acquisition and installation process. It runs on Digital Alpha hardware and uses an Oracle database. A second phase of the project, to begin within the next six months, will include implementation of Custima CyberCSR?, which will provide the enhancements of Internet access and interactive voice responses, Buchert said.
The City of Tulsas Division of Public Works provides water, waste water and refuse services to customers in the City of Tulsa and surrounding areas. The city bills 145,000 customers a month and has perhaps the most complex billing system in the United States, with some 8,000 different rate combinations possible, Buchert said.
?You can get a lot of different combinations when you start charging for different meter sizes. Some of our customers are water only, some are industrial water and sewer only, then we have industrial sewer and stormwater only. There are extra strength charges (for sewer discharges) and some people recycle or do other things that reduce the amount of water going into the sewer. This system handles all the possible different parameters,? he said.
Having a system built on an Oracle database has greatly enhanced the department?s ability to store and retrieve information.
?With our old system it took quite some time to figure out our top 10 water users in the past year,? Buchert said. ?We can get that kind of information out of our new system fairly readily. It also helps with basic reporting, like high and low bill comparisons and averages compared to last year.?
The system features ?exception? reporting that automatically holds up bills that are unusually large to help limit errors in processing.
The Tulsa Department plans to provide Internet access to both improve customer service and reduce the amount of phone calls to the service department, Buchert said.
?We get lot of people calling to know how much water they have used over the last year, how much their usage has varied over the last month, or if their payment has gone in yet or not,? he said. ?With Internet access, people can look that information up anytime they desire, even if it?s 2 o?clock in the morning.?
Other features of the system include payment management for those customers who need to pay on installments, on a budget or need other special arrangements. The system also has a meter management program that can provide historical information on meters and help track the age and location of meters. It also has optional links to most of the common automated meter reading systems.
