Mobile Workflow Reduces Manual Processing by 60 Percent

Denton Municipal Electric (DME) is owned by the residents of Denton, Texas. DME supplies electricity to 55,000 utility customers in the greater Denton area. DME also dispatches other city services with differing workflows. The volume of paperwork from the various city services created delays in serving customers. DME needed to manage the various work requests efficiently and respond to its customers promptly. The Mobile Workforce Management (MWFM) solution reduced manual processing by 60 percent.

One of DME's strategic goals is to increase customer satisfaction. DME utility dispatch handles many types of work requests for several divisions of the city. The divisions had varying degrees of automation and no common system. Staff handled too much paper, had too many work flows, and took too long to respond to customers.

The cumbersome workflows required dispatchers to manually reenter 4,000 paper work requests from the various systems each year, often causing long delays. Those delays were especially troublesome during power outages. Requests from the 811 DigAlert system for locating underground utility cables took particularly long to be manually processed. DME needed consistency, efficiency, and real-time visibility of work status to provide the best service. 

The utility picked the Clevest Mobile Workforce Management solution to leverage the ArcGIS platform capabilities, improving the workflow and increasing efficiency. Clevest provides a scalable enterprise-grade mobile platform for small- to large-sized utilities to drive greater efficiencies in their field operations.

DME implemented the MWFM system for work spanning numerous city divisions including electric, water, and streets. Staff leveraged all aspects of the ArcGIS platform including distribution of information online. Work requests are rapidly and uniformly sent to rugged laptops in the service vehicles.

The enterprise solution is linked to existing systems, producing efficiency gains in both day-to-day operations and during critical emergencies. Many information sources, including GIS assets, 811 requests, outages, customer calls, and crew locations, enable mobile employees to work more effectively. This timely information even empowers workers to restore power outages more quickly. Work requests are processed electronically, providing real-time visibility of the work status throughout the organization. Handling work electronically reduces delays by eliminating manual processing. This workflow transformation gives DME instant access to ArcGIS location intelligence for all work locations.

The former paper-based workflow often took days to process. Since the utility's digital transformation, workflows are now completed in just hours. Work requests providing location intelligence enable workers to minimize drive time and organize their work most effectively. End-users applaud the MWFM system for speeding processing time and eliminating redundant requests. Viewing crew locations in real time bolstered worker safety, and the new situational awareness improved DME's response time in emergency situations by an average of 15 percent.

The new workflow consistency improved operational efficiency by an estimated 10 percent. Simply replacing paper requests with electronic processing dramatically reduced data entry errors. DME immediately noticed better data quality by capturing work notes at their source. By quantifying the workflow, DME now has the tools to better monitor its business activity and continually improve the resultant customer service levels. 

"This is a big deal for us. We've seen a large improvement for a relatively small investment. The ROI will continue to increase over time; it will continue to grow."

Sandra Allsup, Electric Systems Applications Supervisor, Denton Municipal Electric