CHARLESTON, S.C., Nov. 4, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Boise-based Idaho Power has gone live with CES International's Centricity, an operations-management software package that will allow the electric utility to streamline such outage-response functions as fielding customer calls, dispatching and managing repair crews and managing electrical switching.
CES International announced the news today at advanCES 2002, its annual industry conference and user-group meeting, held this year at Kiawah Island in Charleston, S.C.
The Centricity suite also includes Internet-based decision-support tools that integrate data from multiple systems, allowing the utility to analyze information and distribute it to employees via its intranet.
"Centricity will enable us to take a more global view of our business, streamline processes where appropriate, and anticipate, analyze and remedy issues before they cause outage and other problems for us and our customers," said Idaho Power OMS Project Manager Linda Nelson. "In addition to great functionality, such as outage management, Centricity will help us leverage the power of the systems we already have in place. It will enable those systems to work together and give us a maximum return on our Information Technology investments."
Idaho Power went live with Centricity following the consolidation of four dispatch operation centers. Through a collaborative effort by Idaho Power and CES, an interface from the company's customer information system (CIS) to Centricity OMS was developed and also implemented at "go live." The interface allows customer-service personnel to enter outage calls as well as conduct other business using the same technology.
"This allows for an efficient and seamless communication process between the customer-service center and dispatch operations," Nelson said. "We're very pleased with this piece of our implementation and the effort put forth to make it happen."
Idaho Power plans to implement Centricity's Web Call Entry module to provide additional call-taking capability when CIS is unavailable or during off-hours. The module gives customer-service center personnel access to real-time data on customers and outages via a Web browser.
"On the customer-satisfaction side, we do pretty well responding to outages, but with Centricity we will now be better able to pinpoint the exact location of an outage," Nelson said, noting that Idaho Power's coverage area is about 20,000 square miles and mostly rural. "In addition, our operators will now have more information available about the outages for our customers. No one likes outages, but people are usually satisfied if we can give them more details during an outage situation."
Said Dave Jones, CEO and president of CES International: "We are very pleased to have Idaho Power as a customer. They have been very progressive in procuring top-notch systems, such as its customer information system and ESRI geographic information system. Centricity is going to help them get all they can out of these existing systems as well as a great deal of additional enhancements from our applications. The end result will be better customer service and operational efficiency and reliability."
About Idaho Power
Incorporated in 1916, Idaho Power is involved in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy in a 20,000 square-mile area in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon. Idaho Power supplies over 400,000 residential, irrigation, commercial and industrial customers. For more information, visit www.idahopower.com.
About CES International
CES International is a leading global supplier of real-time software solutions for distribution utilities. CES' flagship product, the Centricity operations resource management (ORM) system, optimizes distribution-network operations and reliability, dramatically increasing customer-service capabilities. The Centricity information infrastructure enables the safe and efficient integration of emerging power technologies with traditional distribution networks. Equipped with comprehensive energy-delivery network management capabilities, Centricity helps customers achieve enhanced return on network assets and deliver the "high 9s" reliability and power-quality levels demanded by the information economy. For more information on CES International, visit www.ces.com or call 1-800-450-0266.
Trademarks: CES International, Centricity and the CES International "network sweep logo" design are registered trademarks on file with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the European Union. InterSys, CES.com and advanCES are trademarks of CES International. Other trademarks are used for reference only.