THE CHALLENGE

City Water, Light and Power (CWLP) achieved its aggressive timeline goal to select a CIS system to replace a legacy billing system. CWLP serves over 70,000 customers in Springfield, Illinois and is the state’s largest municipal utility. “We hired TMG in December 2000, the RFP was out in Feb., responses were back in March, a CIS system was selected with a contract negotiated by August, and implementation planning began in September 2001,” said Lois Wolff, Project Manager.

TMG CONSULTING SERVICES

As a first step, Mario Bauer of TMG Consulting led a kick-off meeting with Lois and all utility members of the evaluation and selection team. “In essence, they picked our brains and put into writing what we needed and what we wanted,” notes Lois. TMG Consulting introduced several templates and other process tools, including a questionnaire with individually-detailed CIS system features/functions. The insight gained was used to create a CIS Design Blueprint to document the current environment and anticipate future needs.

Next came the drafting of the RFP, which was distributed directly to vendors and posted at CIS World. TMG helped set the grading criteria for the proposal responses, and prepare a short list of vendors invited on site for a one-day demonstration. After reference checks and other due diligence, one company was asked to return for an extensive five-day product review. Contract negotiations led by Rose Minton of TMG finalized the selection process and moved us into the project itself.

RESULTS

To keep staff morale high during the selection process, CWLP published an internal newsletter with a Survivor TV show theme. “We never would have pulled off this aggressive timetable without TMG guiding us. The proof was a prior attempt by the Utility to select and install a system that took over two years and failed. TMG really floored the accelerator and helped us through the inevitable rough spots. Because of their wealth of experience and the fact that they are not directly affiliated with any one provider, they thought of details to write into the RFP and contract that neither we nor the vendors had considered. TMG was our insurance policy through the CIS selection process.”

CWLP spoke with four other consulting firms before selecting TMG. Lois said, “We chose TMG because they know the CIS needs of energy utilities like ours. Plus, they stayed in touch and honored their fixed price even after we took longer than anticipated to proceed.”