Three years of blood, sweat and tears proved to be a winning formula for El Paso Water’s next-generation customer information system.
Known as both Program H2GO and C2M, the project was announced as winner of CS Week’s Expanding Excellence Award in Level II, utilities with annual revenues of less than $750 million, for the Best CIS Implementation category. CS Week, the premier annual customer service conference, attracts thousands of professionals from electric, gas and water utilities.
Honors announced
CS Week praised EPWater for implementing a major industry platform to improve operations in customer self-service, among other achievements. The CIS project kicked off in August 2020 and was implemented in March 2022.
The awards will be presented during the CS Week 2023 conference in May. An EPWater delegation will attend to collect the awards.
The utility was also named a finalist in the Innovation in Field Automation category for its KloudGin platform, providing EPWater with the integration of work order, inventory and other CIS functions.
For IT Project Manager Werner Klouda, all the credit goes to the core team – comprised of mostly IT and Customer Service professionals – who took charge of transforming customer care and billing at EPWater.
“Their work was especially impressive because the team faced many challenges along the way, such as the pandemic and the sudden passing of key team member Jeanette Cordero soon after the project launch,” said Klouda, adding that the commitment from the utility and management helped ensure the massive project’s success.
Setting a standard
During the core team’s recent celebration of the project’s official closing, system implementation partner Infosys saluted the small team’s herculean efforts in implementing many systems at once.
“The C2M project proves with dedication and perseverance, El Paso Water can rise to industry standards and deliver enterprise level solutions,” said Ozzy Palacios, Utilities Application Manager. “Project success was a direct result of executive sponsorship, project team effort and stakeholder participation.”
For future projects, Chief Information Officer Fred Solano and Utility Assistant Chief Information Officer Edgar Campos said that the core team set a gold standard to follow.
“The award is validation of the commitment and expertise that we always knew existed within the EPWater team and of the confidence we have in their ability to deliver for the organization,” Campos said.