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PowerWater


"The choice of the Adlib Express conversion solution was crucial to the success of refining our business process. Power and Water Corp staff and customers have benefited from quick responses and the accurate display of critical information in PDF documents. Further uses for Adlib software have already been identified and are being phased into production."

Gary McKinnon, System Administrator FIS
 
Power and Water Corp

Industry: Utilities/Energy

Products Used:

Adlib Express

Business Challenge:
  • Reduce response time to customer inquiries
  • Ensure accuracy
  • Merge documents from multiple sources into a single PDF


Business Solution:
  • Cover letters are populated with customer information
  • Four separate documents are merged into a single PDF using DPI job tickets
  • The resulting PDF is emailed directly to the customer

Overview

Power and Water Corporation (PWC) is one of the largest businesses in the Northern Territory of Australia. They are part of the Dial-Before-You-Dig (DBYD) program, a national organization that manages industrial and consumer inquiries. These inquiries are in regards to the location of underground power-communication and water-sewage lines for properties that are scheduled to be excavated for building or renovation. 

DBYD sends the inquiry to all pertinent member organizations in the excavation area. The organizations are obligated to respond within two working days – either by supplying plans of their underground network or confirming that there are no digging encumbrances.. 

Instead of the recommended protocol to contact DBYD first, many consumers contacted PWC directly, putting a huge strain on resources. PWC then responded to all requests manually, making the process inefficient, time-consuming and costly.

Business Challenge

The challenge for PWC was to find a more streamlined, timely and efficient way to address inquiries. Specifically, they needed to:

  • Be cost effective when answering customer inquiries regarding PWC assets in the field
  • Develop a system to reduce manual error
  • Ensure customers receive information in a timely manner
  • Provide documents in a universally readable format
  • Provide documents in a consistent format, including a coversheet, disclaimers and maps

Solution

Adlib Express is now used to turn electronic inquiries into PDF files, which are emailed to the customer with the correct and required information.  PWC uses Adlib Software’s DPI job ticket feature to fully automate this PDF publishing process. Several documents are merged from the information repositories of the organization that including:

  • An automatically populated coversheet with the contact and work details, and information on the officer who reviewed the customer’s request
  • A General Information Sheet that contains disclaimers and instructions for the customer Water/Sewerage and/or Power/Communications map(s) generated by the PWC built Utilities Viewer System
  • Once the conversion process is complete, the resulting PDF file is automatically emailed to the customer, or in the case of no customer email address, it is sent by fax

Benefits

  • Cost efficient - Costly manual processes are eliminated, with an average estimated saving of $130,000 AUD per year.
  • Quick turnaround - Processing requests are approximately 10 times faster.
  • Reliable - Maps are generated reliably and consistently, and published with the appropriate legal disclaimers.
  • Easy integration - PWC was able to write software around Express Server to fully automate PDF production to fit their work plan and systems.
  • Information silos were bridged - The ability to merge multiple file sources into a single composite PDF document from several different sources such as Oracle and Bentley.