News from iFactor Consulting

iFactor Informer

Issue: # 4

December/2009

Greetings!

Welcome to the final edition of the Informer for 2009. It has been a very interesting year at iFactor, and despite very tough economic times for all of our customers, we have continued to grow as a business. We are very excited about the growth in our customer base, the introduction of several brand new products this year, significant enhancements made in others, and the addition of several new members to the iFactor team.

January will bring a new season of conferences, and we will be out on the road again sharing our solutions and gathering information on the utility web and outage communications markets. You can meet us at the Conferences Connect Utility Web Week, where Brad Sileo and Chad Swenka will be presenting a workshop on Outage Communications. This Outage Communications 2.0 workshop builds on the changing landscape of Web 2.0 and the fact that outage information is one of the most critical customer service transactions a utility completes. We will also be attending several industry trade shows and a variety of workshops and summits in the first half of the year.

As we plan for 2010, we will continue to look for your feedback and ideas on ways we can help you build great customer relationships! You can always send ideas, questions, and comments to our support desk.

Industry Update

Act Now! SMS Interface Leads the Future of Customer Service
Companies have been making an effort to automate customer service for many years. Two obstacles exist that can delay customer actions, both resulting in a negative customer service experience. The first obstacle is the customer's inability to take action immediately. For example, a service provider may initialize a "payment past due" alert to users via phone or email. Most users aren't able to take a personal call or check personal email during working hours. Customers then have to call back or respond to the email after work. A similar problem occurs with email since in most cases machine generated emails do not support 2 way processing for replies due to content complexities and security concerns.

The second obstacle is that once a user responds to the service provider by calling back or logging into the service provider's website, it takes a considerable amount of time to accomplish the necessary tasks to close the issue. When using a website, the customer must spend time reviewing options, navigating the site, and either entering or confirming pertinent information. A phone call is even more time consuming for both the customer and the company. The customer must explain to an agent why he or she is calling, and the agent must locate the appropriate record and possible resolutions within their system. An IVR may remove this workload for the company, but does nothing to improve time required on the customer's part, often resulting in a negative response towards the company.

Read more on our blog...

Product News:

Notifi Version 2.1 Development Update

Development is underway on version 2.1 of the Notifi product. This version will expand on the exciting 2-way capabilities introduced in version 2.1 by adding several additional options:

Support for integration to CIS systems for billing and payment transactions
Broadcast message delivery user interface in the administration console
Support for additional web services to integrate Notifi with backend systems and web portals
Expanded capabilities for configuring and managing different types of campaigns within Notifi

The release of Notifi version 2.1 is planned for the first quarter of 2010. The functionality above is available for inclusion in all new projects starting in January 2010.

StreetLightOutages.com Updates Released

The StreetLightOutages.com hosted solution has been updated with several new features over the past few months. This includes support for additional web services integration options and new site embedding capabilities. There is also now an online management console available for the application which allows you to access and review all incidents reported for your organization right on the website.

We also recently completed an update to the hosting environment for StreetLightOutages.com. The system was moved onto a fully secure hosting platform which includes management of the entire solution in a data center and operating environment designed to secure all levels of data. This new environment provides us with the needed security and scalability to manage the large volumes of data, transactions, and integration of this solution.

Storm Center Enhancements and Add-ons
We continue to develop and expand the functionality of Storm Center to meet customer needs, with new administration, data display, and integration capabilities all underway for Storm Center 2.2. The 2.2 release will also include improvements to web client and data processing performance and more options for handling complex sets of data including custom layer, service territory, and both planned and unplanned outages. You can see some of these new features included on the new customer releases at National Grid and Hydro One.

Additional research and development is also underway to expand the functionality in Storm Center Mobile. We will expand the types of summary and specific outage information we can include, and continue to look at the best options for mapping displays on a wide range of devices. Work is also underway to enable more advanced capabilities such as GPS integration on specific smartphone platforms such as iPhone, Blackberry, and Android devices.

Web Maps Connector Release 212 is Available for Download
The latest release of the Web Maps Connector is now available. This release includes several new enhancements as well as several bug fixes including:

Better rendering support on SIAS-based applications
New Transaction Logging functionality enabling analysis of usage by machine and user
Better rendering support for rotated map views and Layout applications.
A new Magik API for requesting routing information between 2 or more waypoints. A GUI for this API is currently under development.

Existing customers can access this new functionality by downloading and installing the latest version.

What We're Reading at iFactor...