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Vertex Provides Customer Platform to DC Water
[April 24, 2018]

Vertex Provides Customer Platform to DC Water


Vertex, a leader in utility customer experience solutions, today announced that DC Water has completed the implementation of the VertexOne SaaS (News - Alert) Customer Platform. This upgrade expands an almost 20-year relationship between the two organizations, leveraging the strengths of each organization in the pursuit of "World Class" customer service.

DC Water expects to experience significant benefits with the new platform through access to VertexOne's new customer information system, customer web portal and mobile self-service, bill presentment, as well as its payment and mobile workforce management solutions.

"The achievements of the combined VertexOne and DC Water teams have set a new standard in how future utility industry implementations are executed and supported," said Andrew Jornod, Chief Executive Officer, Vertex (News - Alert). "At Vertex, we have had a long-established vision for a more efficient and effective way to implement and support a CIS and related technologies. DC Water has helped us make that vision a reality."

"This was the first complete customer information system upgrade in 18 years," commented Henderson Brown, IV, DC Water Interim CEO and General Manager. "DC Water is now providing state-of-the-art services to customers while providing added security of their customer information."

"We have already seen several improvements and benefits in our front and back office operations from our upgrade to VertexOne," said Charles Kiely, Assistant General Manager, DC Water. "We were also able to bring outsourced back-office operations back in house. Now, we are able to look more strategically at our business and also focus more on our customers."

DC Water completed the initial VertexOne customer self-service portal, www.mydcwater.com, and mobile self-service app after only seven months. The new self-service experience gives cusomers an easy-to-use, fully-secure platform for bill pay and usage analysis. The early launch of these features allowed DC Water to improve the customer experience early in the project, while streamlining operations and positioning the organization to deploy more enhanced customer service features after the core CIS went live. At the end of 2017, DC Water completed the larger implementation of migrating its 18-year-old customer information system onto the VertexOne SaaS Customer Platform, powered by SAP (News - Alert).



Simultaneously, DC Water also completed the implementation and integration of the VertexOne SaaS-based Mobile Workforce Management solution powered by KONA, from The Confluence Group. In addition, DC Water added new electronic billing and payment features, powered by Kubra (News - Alert). This was the second phase of the implementation - and the most complex portion - serving as a key milestone for the VertexOne SaaS Customer Platform.

DC Water serves a high volume of government agencies along with residential, commercial and industrial customers, including all of the federal government buildings located in the District of Columbia. DC Water has relied on Vertex as its customer experience technology partner for nearly 20 years and embarked on this major expansion of the existing partnership in Dec. 2016. The utility was searching for a tier-one solution that would allow it to better engage its customers, adapt to an increasingly complex market landscape, and provide customers with state-of-the-art technology to manage their accounts. These requirements demanded an agile solution that could grow and evolve as the demands on the utility increased. To ensure its resources stayed focused on serving its customers and improving the operation, DC Water chose a cloud/SaaS-based model to lower overall cost and risk, depending on a service provider to maintain the platform.


"Deploying VertexOne in the cloud allows us to shift our focus away from the technical IT challenges of a traditional CIS to solving business problems," said Tom Kuczynski, Chief Information Officer at DC Water. "We're in the customer service business, and technology is a means to that end. Our partnership with Vertex allows us to put the customer first while Vertex addresses the bulk of the technology challenges."

About Vertex

Dedicated solely to the utility industry, Vertex Business Services has been a recognized leader in customer experience solutions for the past 20 years. Vertex 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, ERP, EAM, MWM, MDM, and Customer Self Service-Vertex helps utilities more efficiently deliver a compelling customer experience while also driving utility operations forward. Vertex 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 and leaving the technology to us. For more information, visit www.vertexone.net.

About DC Water

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) is an industry leading multi-jurisdictional regional utility that provides drinking water and wastewater collection and treatment for millions of visitors, residents and employees in the District of Columbia, and also collects and treats wastewater for a population of 1.6 million in Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland and Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.

DC Water's service area covers approximately 725 square miles and the enterprise operates the world's largest advanced wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 370 million gallons per day and a peak capacity of 1.076 billion gallons per day. Blue Plains is also a model in sustainability, with anaerobic digesters burning sludge for combined heat and electricity and plans for green infrastructure on an unprecedented scale to reduce combined sewer overflows.


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