Success story
Snohomish County
Public Utility DistrictIndustry• Utilities

Solutions• OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions• OpenText™ Document Presentment forSAP® Solutions

Results
Reduced risk and improved
efficiency with enhanced enterprisecontent control
Improved document change
turnaround time by months
Connected unstructured andstructured content with seamless
SAP integration
Improved call center efficiency
and reduced customer call times
Ensured enterprise-wide user
adoption with effective changemanagement program

Public utility fuels digitaltransformation with OpenText

Snohomish County Public Utility District uses OpenText Suite for SAP®
to power content generation and management“Making changes to letters used to be a long process.
Now, with OpenText Document Presentment, it is easyand fast. The process is down to two to three weeks
instead of three to four months.”
Amy Brown

Business Analyst
Snohomish County PUD

Public utility fuels digital transformation with OpenText

Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) is the second largest
publicly owned utility in Washington, with more than 345,000
electricity customers and 20,000 water customers. Established in1936, Snohomish County PUD is committed to delivering power andwater to its customers in a safe, sustainable and reliable manner.
As a not-for-profit organization, Snohomish County PUD is focused onproviding quality service to its customers, prudently managing costs
and continually looking for opportunities to improve the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of its business.
In recent years, Snohomish County PUD increasingly struggled to
manage its vast information assets and to meet its stakeholders’information needs, which included everything from public records
requests to regulatory audits. Mitzi Bulman, sr. manager, District
Information Governance at Snohomish County PUD, explained, “Thereare so many different regulatory requirements and that is part of thechallenge of managing our content. How do we track information sowe can instantly find what we need? It is very important to be able tofind information if there is an audit.”
The utility’s most valued stakeholders are its customers, but theircommunication needs had also become overwhelming—100,000 service
notifications, 3 million invoices, 500,000 letters and 230,000 overdue
notices annually. Compounding the issue was that the company’sexisting system was outdated and could not meet the expectations oftoday’s customer. Communication channels were limited and changes
to customer correspondence could take months. Amy Brown, a former
business analyst for Snohomish County PUD, noted, “One of thechallenges we face is that customers today have an expectation of
instant information and communication. We need to make information
available to them immediately and in the way they want to receive it.”A platform to create, automate and transform
The search for a complete and holistic solution for managing theirinformation led Snohomish County PUD to OpenText. The OpenText
Suite for SAP offers a digital content platform that seamlessly integrates
with SAP, which was critical given the utility’s SAP environment. To
manage its enterprise content management (ECM) needs, the company
selected OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions. In addition,
Snohomish County PUD chose OpenText™ Document Presentment
for SAP® Solutions to design, deploy and deliver its customer
correspondences via multiple channels.
“One of our considerations was our need to communicate with customers directly and in their preferred channel. That was a big driverfor choosing OpenText Document Presentment. It offered a lot of opportunity for us to expand our channels. It was the clear choice andintuitively the direction for us to go,” explained Brown.
Achieving enterprise-wide adoption
Migrating an entire organization from paper files and shared
drives to Extended ECM for SAP Solutions has been no smalltask. To guide the effort, Snohomish County PUD established theDistrict Information Governance (DIG) department to oversee themanagement of informational assets and provide user trainingand education. The team led company-wide clean-up efforts inpreparation for moving information to the OpenText platform, withrecognition and rewards for participation.
“We called it, ‘Team Up to Clean Up’ and we had what we called theGolden Shovel award, which always makes everyone laugh a little bit.
Whether it was a big electronic clean-up of files or a physical one, wewould publish an article in our newsletter and reward the effort with

“When it comes tooperations, OpenText
Extended ECM now
enables users to accessall relevant information
while out in the field.
This reduces time spentlooking for informationand eliminates the needto print off their workorders. As a result, weare seeing an increasein productivity for ouroperations.”
Jill StelterEnterprise Content Manager
Snohomish County PUD

Public utility fuels digital transformation with OpenText

a Golden Shovel plaque. It put a positive spin on the project because
records management and information governance are not always
everyone’s favorite thing to do,” explained Jill Stelter, enterprisecontent manager at Snohomish County PUD. The innovative concept todrive their company-wide information governance initiative was wildly
successful and went a long way towards ensuring strong user adoptionof the enterprise project.
Transforming how enterprise content is consumed and managed
With OpenText, Snohomish County PUD has successfully driven
organizational change around information governance. With roughly
300 users across numerous departments, the ultimate goal is to rollout the solution to all 45 departments and more than 1,100 employees
throughout the organization.
The solution provides the ability for employees in multiple departments
to easily access and share information. “When it comes to operations,
OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions now enables users
to access all relevant information while out in the field. Whether
it’s photos from previous inspections or design documents fromengineering, it’s all there. This reduces time spent looking for
information and eliminates the need to print off their work orders.
As a result, we are seeing an increase in productivity for ouroperations,” said Stelter.
Mitigating legal and regulatory risks
As both a utility and a public entity, Snohomish County PUD must
adhere to strict industry and public record regulations and provide
information for audit purposes or public requests, or else face steepfines. With information stored in Extended ECM for SAP Solutions, theorganization can now easily respond to any request. “In the past, wemight not be able to find all the information because it was storedin someone’s files or deep down in their hard drive. For us, being
able to capture everything and comply with all our regulatory
requirements is a huge benefit,” said Stelter. She added, “If we are not
managing information correctly, either not keeping it long enoughor keeping it too long, it can impact us. Having Extended ECM forSAP Solutions and being able to automate the records management
process was very important. Once we have everything in the system,
it will help us sleep at night knowing that OpenText is managing ourrecords instead of having them on shared drives somewhere.”
Seamless SAP integration
In addition, the company has realized the benefits of using the ECM
solution to connect its unstructured information with its SAP content. “Itis a great fit. The possibility of having SAP transactions and content
together is really valuable,” said Stelter. The integration has been
seamless for users. “We have people saying, ‘I found the documents
in SAP.’ We tell them, ‘No, those documents actually live in OpenText.’
And OpenText has also made it easier to search and find SAP content.
From a user standpoint, I think that has been a big win,” added Brown.
Efficient customer communication process leads to time savings
With Document Presentment, Snohomish County PUD replaced an
outdated, cumbersome system with a flexible, efficient platform that integrates with SAP and easily handles the utility’s correspondences, including 500,000 letters per year and up to 20,000 bills per day. “Usersare very happy as OpenText Document Presentment is significantly
better than what we had before. It has been such a positive experience for users. They are able to get through the work much faster,with fewer complications and less follow-up,” said Brown.

Public utility fuels digital transformation with OpenText

More effectively communicating with customers has shaved time off
customer service calls. “We have been able to cut a minute or two offeach call that has a correspondence element to it, which has been ahuge benefit for the call center,” said Brown. She added, “OpenText
Document Presentment allows great user interaction. Users can edit
their customer letters in real time, which is not something we hadbefore. And it integrates with SAP, so it is a smooth, single interface
for the user.”
In addition, long-term changes to correspondence no longer require IT
involvement. “That has been drastically improved. Making changes
to letters used to be a long process. Now, with OpenText Document
Presentment, it is easy and fast. The process is down to two to three
weeks instead of three to four months. It is absolutely a definite
improvement,” said Brown.
The team could not be happier with the reaction to the solution. “Thereception was absolutely wonderful. We had customer service reps
who were just thrilled when they first saw it. They were so happy tosee what it could do and are excited about its potential,” said Brown.

Future enhancements and possibilities
Building on its current success, Snohomish County PUD looks forward
to continuing its digital transformation by upgrading to OpenText
Release 16. In addition, the company foresees continued innovation incustomer correspondence. “We are looking at mail merge and email.
We want to leverage the features that we haven’t fully exploredyet, and we anticipate significant benefits when we get the email
channel implemented. It will make such a big difference to ourcustomers for us to provide information how they need it and when
they need it,” concluded Brown.

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company™,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information aboutOpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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