Empowering electric utility field teams with digital mobility.

Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of Network IQ. I'm Steve Tongish, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at IQgeo, and I'm really pleased today to have two very experienced guests in the electric utility industry. That's Charles Huddleston, who is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at CSA, and Halle Childress, who's an Electrical Engineer at Bolivar Energy. Hello, Charles and Haley, how are you today? Doing good. Thank you so much for joining us on this. We had the great fortune to have both of you speak at our recent meetup event in America, and that's why we actually decided we'd do this, because you covered such an important topic about, you know, what are the challenges facing the utility industry today, and how do we take on some of those challenges. So, we thought it'd be great to get you onto Network IQ, and so that you can share that with a wider audience. But let's start with some introductions. So, we have two organizations here, CSA and Boulevard Energy, and I think it would be great to explain the relationship between these two organizations, because you work quite closely together, and you both work with IQgeo as well. So, maybe, Charles, if you could jump in and explain who CSA is, and how you work with Bolivar, and how you work with Bolivar. That would be great. Okay. Well, CSA was formed in 1937 to provide billing services to public utilities that were just forming at that time. The first rural electric co-op that was formed in North Mississippi, and at that time, they needed to have billing services for them. So, we were formed in 1937. We operate as a non-profit organization. We provide now IT, all kinds of IT services to public utilities, CIS, financial services, GIS, network security, and Wallabert is one of our member utilities. They own us, and at the end of the year, since we operate as a nonprofit, any excess collections that we take, we give those back to our member services. So, they've been working with us for a long time, and several years ago, they got our GIS product, and that's how we started working with Hallee. I mean, it's astonishing that CSA has been in business for 85-plus years. Is that right? That's correct. Amazing. And Hallie? Yeah, so, Bolivar Energy, we're a small electric utility in West Tennessee. We serve approximately 12,000 customers. And CSA is our vendor partner if you will, for products like IQGeo and other utility-based software solutions. Excellent. So, let's jump right into it, because this was the part of the presentation that Hallee gave at our meetup event that I thought was really interesting. Looking at the challenges that the utility industry is facing today, the electric utility industry, you know, how would you categorize those, Hallee? What are the big challenges that you're facing as an organization? I think the main two Steve, are one would be evolving technology, and the second one would be managing infrastructure. And so, then how do we figure out how to bridge the gap between the two by integrating the broad range of technology that's available out there? And I really think that that is what drives everything we do is what is available and how do we use it? And Charles, you have a broader perspective because you work with many different organizations. What are the things they're telling you? They want something that's easy to use because everybody at a utility has the potential to use the product. So, it needs to be the whole process, the whole environment needs to be as easy to use as possible because of that diversity of the users. And so, that's what we're really seeing. is easy of use and then be able to modify for the utility to modify things to fit their own applications, their own work processes. So, those are the two T's that our utilities are telling us. Ease of use and then able to customize it for their particular processes. So, those are big technology challenges for those organizations. Do you find, Charles, that you talk about adaptability for those organizations. Do they often have very different requirements or is there a lot of common ground between the different applications and the requirements from the organizations? There's a lot of common ground. I mean, damage assessment is a big one that's going. Inspections are many different types. So, there's common ground for all the utilities, but each one implements the process just a little bit differently or they have different data needs because of, you know, their particular situation. Have there been particular challenges that in working with some of these organizations that really stand out? Is there an example of one that you'd highlight? The one that I would highlight is we had a utility that was wanting to go out and collect all their water infrastructure and a person that they tasked for that particular job didn't really have any technical background. He worked at the utility a long time. knew, you know, where the water valves were, so he knew where all the infrastructure was, but he never used technology before. But we were able to teach him how to go out through the GPS collections and then transfer the data into the GIS database of record without any prior technical experience. And you can't take the iPad away from him now that he's collected all the data and it sits on an iPad for him. So, he just really loves it. So, that I think would be our biggest success story. That's an interesting one. Do you see that too, Hallee, that you have sometimes this folklore that exists within the organization from people that have been there a long time and that can be a challenge to extract? When you have people who have been here for, you know, 15, 20 plus years, they're set in their ways. And a lot of times there is that, how do you bridge that gap on, advancing that? But as Charles spoke on the other utility, we see the same thing. Once we're able to teach them and overcome that, hey, here's a new way to do it, it always works out for the best. And once you give it to them, you can't take it away from them. Well, this speaks to our kind of our main topic here today, and it's about field mobility, because that's an area that you presented really nicely at our meetup, Hallie. And there are a lot of barriers to the adoption of that technology. So, certainly being stuck in their ways, doing things the old-fashioned way, that's part of it. But Charles, what do you see as those main, well, technical and personal barriers that exist for deploying field mobility? Back again, go to the ease of use. You want to make the whole process as easy as possible, collecting the data in the last example I gave. Make the collection of the data as easy as possible. And then when you're transferring the data between the two systems, make that process as easy as possible. And basically, if you can get one person to buy in, then other people look and say, hey, you know, he's doing something. it and being successful with it and it's not really that hard so then that helps you can get one key person at the utility to buy in and then it helps a lot you know to spread to other people and the key there is a lot of the times now then this was an older person at the utility i gave the example but a lot of times at some utilities it's the younger people because they grew up with the technology so if you can get one younger person to be able to use the technology and you know say yeah this isn't that hard then then other people will you know follow along with them they don't want to be left behind that's right Hallee you and your team did a fantastic job of of deploying field mobility at boulevard how did you overcome some of those challenges one of the first things i did i just gave the product to our field workers and i let them navigate it at their own pace to begin with let them see it see what they can do with it before i ever told them anything and by doing that it kind of gave them a little bit more self-confidence in using it because they can kind of figure some things out for themselves and then afterwards i let them ask questions and then i provide specific training at that time on what we want them to specifically use the product for but once you allow them to have a sense of they have a little bit of involvement in the product things go a lot smoother so it's really important to get them involved in the process yes and and get them involved on the front end as well on the front end yeah we we've worked with some of our other customers who have actually put together almost like a tiger team and there were a few people that were that were part of the deployment process part of the evaluation process so so really committed to the to the use of this technology is that is that a model that you followed in a way as well i would think so once we adopted this technology it was excuse me it was all hands on deck and it was we're going to this we're not we're trying to get away from the paper and it's one of those like it or not here we are but at the same time we wanted people to be involved with the process of how we're going to use this and what ideas did they have of how we can better this product and use it across our company and that's what we've done and we've successfully implemented that across our whole company yeah so have you to what extent have you eliminated paper then in your field operations is it is it's not i imagine it's not entirely gone it's not but we have cut down a lot because there was certain paper for certain things such as an example lights and that piece of paper got transferred between two to three different departments well as anybody else that gets lost sometimes but we've successfully eliminated something such as that just basic notes that need to be taken that's been eliminated and everything gets pushed into iqgeo at this time yeah so what are the example of the kind of workflows that um you've deployed in the field with your teams one of them let's let's just go back to lights so if you have a light at your home that's not working and you call in so the first step is you're going to call in and you're going to talk to either our customer service or our cashiers front to report that light being out so they take that they put it into iQGeo as something that needs to have maintenance done and then our line crews see it from there they're able to work on that as they're in those specific areas they take it they update as it needs to be in IQGeo then our engineering department sees it they update our mapping software as needs to be from there and then also our customer service department sees it again and they're able to update billing if need be based on what happened at the location so connecting all the pieces together that's really vital i mean that's part of the digital process isn't it to make sure that that's all done Charles just to kind of wrap this up does that does that chime with the experiences you see with the other companies that you work with at CSA yes exactly we had an instance just yesterday of a lady we just introduced her to Uteligo and she was a up front lady so she had a front lady so she'd never seen it before but she was wanting to be able to take customer calls exactly what Hallee was talking about and her her response was it's so easy we said yes yes it is so yes a hundred percent that's exactly and there's all kinds of different processes besides lot processes that our utilities have tried to get rid of the paper another good example of that is we had one utility it was replacing the led lights so they gave the uh and they contracted that out so they gave an ipad to the contractor and they could track the progress as he replaced the led lights on their system so that was really great for them yeah again connecting everything together we often say when we have all these different processes the tricky bit isn't necessarily automating the process it's connecting it's the gaps it's in between the processes and making sure that everything is making sure that everything is joined up so that that's the real challenge so it sounds to me like your advice just to kind of wrap things up your advice in deploying field mobility let me put words in your mouth and then you can tell me if you agree or disagree your advice would be to get people involved early in the process and and get them engaged so they can become champions of this change is is that accurate i think so you know we're in an era of technology is at your fingertips and for us for BEA, the biggest thing is i ask our field workers what do you want to be able to have right there at your fingertips and IQGeo has been a solution for that and we're able to customize that to our needs based off what each department needs and it's just right there for you fantastic Charles any final thoughts no i think that wraps it up really well is yeah have make it easier have a champion you know tell them up front what it's going to be like and um once everybody sees that it's you know easy to use then other people will start using it as well so yeah don't try to force it down there you know force it on to people i guess that would be my advice yeah work with them to to make this technology change because it is a big change it is a big change it is some of these people who have been in the industry for years yep we have to make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible well fantastic we've taken a lot of your time today thank you so much for sharing your your thoughts and insights and we look forward to seeing you this year at the next America's meetup. So i hope to see both of you there, your time thank you so much for your time. You're welcome