October 18, 2012

Consolidated Mapping, Staking, and Outage Management Applications

Consolidated Mapping, Staking, and Outage Management Applications Drive Responsive Customer Service

User Perspective: Lynn Hays, Mapping Supervisor & Engineering Tech, Taylor Electric Cooperative

Our utility covers 14 counties. It’s a total of 99 miles from west to east, and 88% of our service area is duly certified. It’s a big responsibility to see that my number one priority – taking good care of our members – is met every day over such a broad area. Our employees need to be able to have access to as much data as possible so they can respond quickly when trouble occurs, requiring GIS solutions that are powerful and accurate.

When we made the decision to take out our major Mapping, Staking and Outage programs and replace them with Futura, we took a big step forward in our ability to provide outstanding member service. These individual Futura applications are integrated with each other and with our billing/accounting software – which allows everyone in our operation to share the accurate data we need in real time, for maximum speed and efficiency. In an outage situation, Futura OMS puts everything on one screen, with tabs for rapid access. What a difference this makes when we’re hurrying to get our members’ service restored.

Now, if I have any kind of problem – my staking guys may call from the field with an issue – I don’t have to spend all day calling numerous software providers and get them talking to each other to get a problem resolved anymore. I make one phone call to our Futura tech support guy, who looks at our entire system and takes care of it.

I love it! Anybody in our co-op can run this system with little or no previous experience. It’s that simple. Futura provides us with a circle of information that has finally come together. What a blessing.