| Increasing pressure from the regulatory
body, forced Pinnacle West to bring down tariff
structures. And the only way to achieving compliance
without suffering a hit on the bottom line was to
reduce operational costs |
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| The client |
| Pinnacle
West Capital Corporation is an integrated utility
with interests in generation, transmission, distribution
and supply of electricity. The company sells and
delivers electricity and energy related products
and services to around one million wholesale and
retail customers in the western United States. |
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| The challenge |
| Increasing pressure from the
regulatory body, forced Pinnacle West to bring down
tariff structures. And the only way to achieving
compliance without suffering a hit on the bottom
line was to reduce operational costs. From an Information
System perspective, this meant a drastic reduction
in the overall cost of application sustenance. |
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| The solution |
| Wipro started the
solving process on a large and complex integrated
legacy application with more than 700 entities in
the data model, and no up-to-date documentation.
A KAP (Knowledge Acquisition Process) was prepared
that encapsulated the functional and technical knowledge
in the form of SMTD (System Maintenance Technical
Document), and laid out the blue print for solution
development. Wipro set up an Offshore Development
Center to reduce cost of application sustenance,
to service defects, take care of system enhancements
and provide comprehensive 24 x 7 support. Wipro’s
business analysts at the ODC invented a workflow
process covering the entire lifecycle of a change
request. The solution also enabled complex billing
to happen take place through the system leading
to reduced manual intervention and lesser billing
leakages. |
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| The benefits |
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The solution reduced nightly
CIS batch window by 20% (or 2 hours), thereby
ensuring increased timely availability of
CIS online window |
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The quantum
of backlog requests addressed in 12 months
of 2001 was accomplished in just 7 months
in 2002 |
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The budget payment plan
functionality was strengthened leading to
higher end-customer satisfaction for the top
20% of the residential customer base |
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An onsite/offshore ratio
of 35:65 in the ODC brought down overall cost
of CIS Application sustenance |
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| Customer testimonial |
Innovative and
cost-effective IT solutions and processes are an
increasingly important aspect of creating value
and competitive advantage in the utility industry.
Wipro impressed us by the quality of its processes,
the commitment of the people and their level of
knowledge. When all this is combined it means Pinnacle
West has gained a very dynamic solutions partner.
Denny Brown
Chief Information Officer
Pinnacle West |
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