CLEARWATER, Florida – May 15, 2020 – VertexOne, a leading provider of utility technology solutions, today announced that Florida utility provider Pinellas County Utilities (PCU) went live on its new Customer Information System, VertexOne CIS Enterprise™ in April, 2020 . With the go live taking place during the outbreak of COVID-19 and with the entire teams from VertexOne and PCU working from home, VertexOne leveraged its remote delivery model to make the VertexOne CIS Enterprise™ Solution the first 100% remote delivery of its kind.
“Less than a month before go-live, the country was put on lockdown as a result of the global pandemic,” said Matt Lindgren, senior vice president of product delivery, VertexOne. “Instead of throwing their hands up in the air, this team found a way forward – a completely remote go live of an entire customer information system solution.”
PCU had been operating on the same CIS solution since 2008. In 2019 PCU concluded its outdated system was due for an upgrade to better serve its 120,000 customers. PCU and VertexOne worked together to craft a seven-month implementation plan based on VertexOne’s rapid implementation methodology, FastStart, to allow the utility to benefit from its new solution. Additionally, this empowered PCU to automate inefficient manual processes and realize the benefits of a cloud-based solution.
“Working with the VertexOne team, we identified a total of 183 processes we could improve using VertexOne CIS Enterprise™, said Georges Gonzalez, director of customer services, PCU. “Many of those, including inefficient manual collections process, we were able to completely automate.”
The updated solution successfully went live remotely on April 13, allowing PCU to realize the following benefits:
- Enhanced Customer Management processes
- Enhanced Billing and Reporting
- Full automation of several previously 100% manual collections processes
- Faster reporting output
- Team ownership of their processes and the system
- Team collaboration prior, during and after implementation
VertexOne CIS Enterprise™ is powered by SAP S4/HANA version 1909 and leverages its fully integrated Customer Management component and the Fiori theme as user interface. PCU is the first company in the utilities industry to be live on version 1909.
“The way I look at it, any competent company can come in and do a good implementation, but what do you do when something happens unexpectedly or when processes have to change quickly?” said Gonzalez. “That’s when it’s critical to have a relationship with a technology partner that can adapt and help utilities like Pinellas County. That’s just another benefit from having selected VertexOne.”
About VertexOne
Dedicated solely to the utility industry, VertexOne Business Services has been a recognized leader in customer experience solutions for the past 20 years. VertexOne serves nearly 10 million end customers for more than 30 electric, gas and water clients across North America. Through a wide range of innovative services and solutions—including the VertexOne™️ cloud platform inclusive of CIS, MWM, MDM, and Customer Self Service—VertexOne helps utilities more efficiently deliver a compelling customer experience while also driving utility operations forward. VertexOne takes on the heavy lifting of keeping current with the rapid pace of technology changes, so utilities don't have to—leaving our customers more time to focus on core utility business while leaving the technology to us. For more information, visit https://www.vertexone.net.
