How TMWA Implemented a New Water Utility CIS with enQuesta
Truckee Meadows Water Authority replaced an outsourced Vertex eCIS+ with enQuesta, a utility customer information system. The CIS implementation ran about 19 months and went live remotely on March 8, 2021.
- From
Vertex eCIS+
- To
enQuesta CIS in the cloud
- Service area
- Reno and Sparks, Washoe County
Stack on one contract
- enQuesta CIS in the cloud
- Capricorn
- enQuestaLink
- Analytics
- Supplier management
- 01Customers
- 130,000
- Water customers
- Water
- Washoe County, Nevada
- 02Cutover
- March 8, 2021
- Remote CIS go-live
- InitiateDesignBuildPrepareGo-live
- Coordinated over Zoom and Teams
- 03Duration
- ~19 months
- Kickoff to go-live
- Final year run remotely
- 04Recognition
- CS Week 2022
- Level II finalist
- CIS Project of the Year
At a glance
Project snapshot
- Client
- Truckee Meadows Water Authority
- Location
- Washoe County, Nevada (Reno and Sparks)
- Customers
- 130,000 water customers (current published figure)
- Contract
- July 12, 2019
- Kickoff
- August 19 to 22, 2019
- Go-live
- March 8, 2021
- Duration
- About 19 months from kickoff to go-live
- Integrations
- InvoiceCloud payments, SmartWorks (MeterSense) meter data analytics, customer self-service portal, BankUp lockbox, InfoSend bill print. Integrated with TMWA's Sensus AMI program.
- Partner
- Soft Resources
Challenge
Replace a 19-year outsourced utility CIS
Truckee Meadows Water Authority is a not-for-profit, community-owned water utility in Washoe County, Nevada. It treats and delivers drinking water for Reno and Sparks, and it bills customers who pay from a phone, a kiosk, autopay, or a mailed check. Helping customers avoid late payments that could lead to termination of essential services is part of that work. The utility currently serves 130,000 water customers.
TMWA needed an enQuesta CIS implementation to replace Vertex eCIS+ (VertexOne), an outsourced billing system that had been in service for 19 years. Payment processing had been spread across about six vendors. After go-live, TMWA consolidated those payments to InvoiceCloud and BankUp. The new CIS had to produce a redesigned bill with enhanced water-use information and offer payment options the legacy system could not.
Features Vertex eCIS+ could not provide included:
- 01Mass meter change-out for a new AMI system
- 02A customer portal and other communication preferences
- 03Omnichannel payment preferences
- 04GIS integration and automation
- 05Dynamic reporting
- 06Integration with other third-party vendors
TMWA also wanted a cloud CIS. The previous system ran on a private cloud. Call center, billing, and collections work was moving to outsourced partners. ERP was already in the cloud. The utility needed 24/7 availability and a smaller internal staffing load.
The existing system has served our customers well—with incremental updates applied over the past 19 years. However, the need for newer, more capable technology has made the upgrade a necessity.
Solution
Water utility billing software, with integrations at go-live
With help from Soft Resources, TMWA signed a contract with Systems & Software on July 12, 2019 to deliver, train, and implement end-to-end water utility billing software: enQuesta in the cloud. The goal was monthly consumption billing, plus the ability for customers to view statements, pay bills, monitor usage, and suspend or reconnect service.
Alongside core CIS, TMWA procured Capricorn for customer self-service, enQuestaLink for workforce management, enQuesta Analytics (Cognos), and the supplier management module. At go-live, TMWA also launched InvoiceCloud payments, SmartWorks (MeterSense) meter data analytics, a new customer self-service portal, BankUp lockbox, and InfoSend bill print. The CIS was integrated with TMWA's Sensus AMI program. TMWA selected Sensus in November 2019, and that AMI rollout continued after go-live.
S&S configured enQuesta with TMWA-specific features using the Elevate method. Custom work included backflow, work queues, master/sub billing, and mass creation of premises.
The S&S project team included a senior project manager, implementation consultants, software engineers and designers, technical operations consultants, and S&S executives. Combined, that team brought more than 60 years of utility-system implementation experience. The team stayed on TMWA through post-go-live support.
Product stack
Cloud-hosted enQuesta CIS with the edge systems TMWA procured on the same contract. Soft Resources advised.
Edge systems
- Capricorn
Customer self-service: statements, payments, usage, start and stop
- enQuestaLink
Workforce management (ServiceLink)
enQuesta Analytics (Cognos)
Reporting and analytics software
Supplier management
enQuesta module for supplier workflows
Core CIS
Core customer information and monthly consumption billing
Hosting
Hosted environment with 24/7 availability
Implementation
A remote CIS implementation, then go-live on March 8, 2021
Elevate is the S&S implementation method used on this project. Project management covered scope and cost, resources, communication, issue and risk, and schedule. Data conversion ran in parallel: map and extract, clean, stage, convert to enQuesta, balance, then convert at go-live.
Project kickoff ran August 19 to 22, 2019. About 19 months later, TMWA went live on enQuesta. COVID-19 travel limits hit the plan. Roughly the final year of the project ran remotely. The S&S team could not travel on site, which changed data-migration, training, simulation, and cutover work that had been designed as on-site. TMWA's customer service team sits in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, one hour ahead of TMWA.
The remote go-live is the through-line of this implementation. Data conversion ran over the weekend of March 5 to 7, 2021. TMWA went live on enQuesta on Monday, March 8, 2021. Cutover was coordinated over Zoom and Teams. The last year of work, and the weekend that put the new CIS into production, happened without an on-site war room.
A full billing parallel was run and signed off before go-live. The last legacy bill cycle and the first enQuesta cycle were sequenced so there was no gap in billing. Payments were paused for only a few days during cutover. TMWA's April 2022 case study described the project as on time and within budget.
Elevate timeline
Dated milestones from the July 2019 contract through the March 8, 2021 go-live, then the five Elevate phases, with data conversion running in parallel from extract through balancing.
July 12, 2019
Contract signed
August 19 to 22, 2019
Project kickoff
March 5 to 7, 2021
Data conversion weekend
March 8, 2021
Go-live on enQuesta
01
Initiate
- Contract signed July 12, 2019
- Project kickoff August 19 to 22, 2019
- Statement of work
- Roles and responsibilities
- Infrastructure setup
- PM documents
- Project schedule
- Project charter
- Order cloud resources
02
Design
- Discovery
- Requirements gathering
- PPA workshops
- Core team training
- Report list
- Testing plan
- Install software
- Produce infrastructure
03
Build
- System configuration
- Dropping configuration
- Custom development
- Interface development
- Report creation
- Security setup
- S&S QA
04
Prepare
- Front line
- Training
- Simulation
- Acceptance testing
- System tuning
- Infrastructure complete
- Go-live checklist
05
Go-live
- Data conversion March 5 to 7, 2021
- Go-live Monday, March 8, 2021
- Cutover over Zoom and Teams
- Checklist complete
- enQuesta in operation
- Post go-live support
Data conversion process
- 01Initial data mapping and extract
- 02Extract data
- 03Clean data
- 04Move to staging tables
- 05Convert to enQuesta
- 06Run balancing
- 07Go-live conversion
Results
Operations held through cutover
TMWA migrated to enQuesta without interrupting day-to-day accountabilities or customer expectations. S&S reported no billing issues and no customer concerns raised to TMWA at go-live. The CIS billed on monthly consumption. Customers could view statements, pay, monitor usage, and suspend or reconnect service from the new stack, in one package, without extra system integrators or layered applications.
In 2022, CS Week named TMWA a Level II finalist for CIS Project of the Year in the Expanding Excellence Awards. That is a finalist placement, not a win.
We're extremely happy for TMWA and are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with them on the implementation of enQuesta. The teams collectively and unequivocally agree that this project was a tremendous success.
Related reading: the May 2021 go-live announcement and the CS Week 2022 finalist announcement.
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