The city of Fort Collins, Colorado, has chosen the latest Indus customer management solution to help upgrade its citywide customer service capabilities.

A member of the Platte River Power Authority, Fort Collins is striving to deliver one-stop contact for its utility and non-utility customers. To do so, the city is upgrading to Indus Customer Suite 4.0 to give its customers a single point of contact for information and services. Additionally, the advanced delinquency process in Customer Suite will allow Fort Collins Utilities to appropriately handle non-utility charges as they become delinquent. As a municipal department, Fort Collins Utilities is mandated to bill for services that are not utility-related and therefore not subject to the same rules as utility service. Because the Indus solution’s collection strategy process accommodates multiple jurisdictions, account classes, credit ratings, times of year, etc., it will support the city’s more flexible collection strategies to enhance its revenue management. As a result, with a single, flexible and scalable solution, the city can manage the entire customer care and billing process for both utility and non-utility customers.

“Our customers count on us to provide reliable energy and safe drinking water, but they also expect us to deliver efficient and quality customer service,” said Michael B. Smith, general manager, Fort Collins Utilities. “By facilitating collaboration and enhanced data sharing across our diverse departments, Indus Customer Suite provides a powerful tool for our customer service representatives to help them meet this challenge.”

The flexible architecture and scalability of Customer Suite will enable the application to grow with the city as its needs expand. And, because the solution is built around the Oracle 10g portal framework, it will enhance collaboration within the utility and with other city systems such as the geographic information system. Customer Suite’s user interface provides information at users’ fingertips without the need to navigate deep into the system to solve business problems. In addition, the Oracle Workflow Engine within Customer Suite can be used to model complex customer-specific business flows that typically involve multiple applications. As a result, Customer Suite will help Fort Collins move closer to its goal of offering citizens one-stop contact with the city.