Large Regulated Electric Utility Provider
Charging-Up the Customer Experience and Operational Efficiency
What if... we could bridge a technology gap to build a foundation for an improved customer and member experience?
Our client is a regulated utility provider to more than 843,000 customers in the South Central states, including 1.5 million people in a major metropolitan area.
Delivering Efficiency, Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction With Appian
Increasing business demands put pressure on developers to both maintain existing applications and develop new ones. Our client needed a low-code solution that would support customer data migration, work order management, materials forecasting, and substation entry management.
At the same time, a lack of supply chain visibility and data-driven materials forecasting led to customers experiencing delays in platform updates and new products.
Our client wanted to become more efficient in leveraging emerging technologies to improve the customer experience. We proposed an Appian cross-functional and product-based delivery pod capable of scoping, developing, and delivering solutions from project discovery to production. In addition, the Appian platform lands on AWS, allowing our client to take advantage of cloud agility and scale.
Improving Legacy Customer Data Efficiency and Accessibility
All of our client's historical customer and deployment data was housed in 30 disparate SharePoint sites owned by different teams, which made answering customer requests a manual and lengthy process. The company had already invested in the Appian platform and wanted to migrate all this disparate data to a single, easily accessible location.
We led a multi-year legacy data migration of more than 30 gigabytes of historical customer data and documents, working closely with the client's Appian and SharePoint teams to identify, extract, and migrate data from SharePoint to Appian. With a single view of data, customer service agents can quickly and easily access a customer's profile and history to solve requests, while our client can reduce its IT footprint.
Improving Data Quality With Appian
Our client's customers use the website to place maintenance requests and request project updates. However, the company's SAP ERP platform was unreliable and unable to handle the large amount of information submitted, which meant customers could not track the status of their request. The company needed to integrate SAP ERP with Appian to support data quality and improve data visibility.
We integrated SAP ERP with Appian and rolled it out companywide to provide employees and customers with a modern and easy-to-use portal and real-time dashboards that improve productivity and performance.
Poor Supply Chain Visibility Led to Delays
A central piece of our client's business is grid enhancement. However, the company faced challenges with a lack of visibility into its supply chain that led to customer projects being canceled because the materials needed for smarter, automated power grids were not available.
We worked closely with the company's forecast and demand-planning groups to build a robust and data-intensive Appian supply chain application that manages budgets and inventory levels, demand planning, and improves forecasting of all raw materials used enterprise-wide. The app integrates with Power BI to improve enterprise reporting and allows for better planning of customer-facing projects and updates.
Enhancing Substation Entry Management With Digital Logging
Our client manages thousands of substations, which are restricted-entry, high-voltage electric system facilities used by both our client's employees and contractors to switch generators and equipment in and out of a system.
Our client relied on a manual substation log-in process that introduced both security and safety risks, as unauthorized entries and accidents were reported late or lost entirely. The company wanted an automated operator's log and substation entry log to improve check-in efficiency, reduce risks, and ensure safety.
We integrated Appian into our client's digital logging solution to build a mobile app that authenticates substation logins and reduces the risk of safety events with live reporting and automated data entry.
I can get better quality, velocity, and collaboration with Perficient for a fraction of what I would with other vendors.Appian Platform Owner
Results
Electrifying App Development With Appian
With our partnership and support, our client successfully rolled out eight new applications in six months – a remarkable 300% increase. App deployment time dropped from six to two months, which allows the company to focus on creating innovative applications that serve customers and fuel better experiences with the brand.
300% increase in app rollouts
App deployment dropped from 6 months to 2 months
Our client's customers have better visibility into maintenance requests, and customer-facing projects are being delivered on time due to better supply chain forecasting.
Our long history of partnership and success with our client, combined with our deep Appian and low-code development expertise, made us the perfect partner to support this transformation.
