How Smartphones Help CPS Energy Innovate and Boost the Bottom Line
CPS Energy is using smartphones to bridge the divide between its field and office workers, and in the process creating a robust network of formerly divided staffers. They've already reduced headcount, improved customer satisfaction and made the supply chain more efficient.
CIO — In early 2006, San-Antonio, Texas-based CPS Energy, the nation's largest municipally-owned energy provider, was by all accounts riding the road to riches. The company had the highest bond ratings of any such utility provider. Its workforce and customer-base in general expressed satisfaction. And most importantly, it was profitable. In other words, there were no external signs that the company was about to launch a technology program that would redefine the way it did business and reshape its workforce of roughly 4,000.
"We had a much larger workforce than a business our size maybe should have," Barron says.
Barron, who had recently been named CPS's first CIO, looked at other companies with large mobile workforces like its own, companies like UPS and FedEx, and saw a huge disparity in the way his business was operating. For instance, specific CPS workers had little or no access to IT systems and resources while away from the office or warehouse. They were often required to visit work sites or customer locations to diagnose issues or suggest fixes before reporting back to the appropriate departments or parties, which would then initiate the next step of the resolution process. That could mean dispatching additional workers, and the whole ordeal could take days.
Photo by Robert Baumgardner
"If we kept with the amount of manual labor that it took for us to accomplish that work, we would not be in the position to be competitive in the future," Barron says.
From this realization, the company's Magellan Program was born. The Magellan Program was envisioned by Barron and his colleagues—the CIO was and continues to be the program's lead sponsor—as a way to better mobilize and connect its traditionally siloed workforce to the people and systems they needed to do their jobs. The goals of the programs: extend CPS's networking infrastructure; build its own secure Wi-Fi networks in offices and warehouse; and deploy smartphones and custom mobile applications to all CPS staffers who didn't currently have a laptop or other mobile device.
The Magellan Program is currently about halfway deployed: CPS expects it to be fully implemented in 2011.
