The project to replace Oracle’s Work & Asset Management (WAM) and Mobile Workforce Management (MWM) systems with Cityworks continues to move along with the following phases or “Task Orders” (TO).

TO-02 Global Configuration
This phase wrapped up in early October and involved employees from Water Resources, Water Treatment Plant (WTP), Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), Gas, Electric, Meter, Finance, and IT collaborating to setup the initial configuration for the system. These are settings that impact all users and are the “default” settings for the system.

“The work of this group contributed significantly to laying the foundational framework for the Cityworks application to live in,” said IT Program Manager/Cityworks Project Manager Allen Watkins. “Congratulations to this team on a successful wrap-up!”

TO-03 Water
The Water Department was the first operating department to kick off their phase of the Cityworks project earlier this year. Most recently, they have been finalizing an end-user training agenda that includes administrator training and “train-the-trainer” sessions to ensure that a standardized and consistent training is available to all users, including new hires. This team is also gearing up to go live with Cityworks by the end of this year.

TO-04 Gas
The Gas Department was the second operating department to begin their phase, TO-04, back in April. Their most recent action items include creating dashboards, developing a system integration test plan, and continuing to integrate their work processes into Cityworks configuration.

TO-05 Electric
The Electric Department kicked off TO-05 in August and continues to document their configurations and to enter them into the Cityworks system. They should wrap up configurations in the coming weeks and begin developing a system integration test plan.

TO-06 CCS Integration
The Cityworks project team and Customer Cloud Service (CCS) project team recognized the critical importance of the integration between the two systems and chose to advance the start of TO-06 back in April. TO-06 includes short-cycle meter-related work as well as appointment-based work typically handled by the Gas Department. This sub-project continues to move along with the CCS team identifying items to be researched or resolved by the Cityworks team ahead of testing phases. 

Customer Cloud Service Update

The upgrade from Oracle’s Customer Care & Billing (CC&B) software to their cloud-based Customer Cloud Service (CCS) is a large and complex project. Thankfully, the team of employees working on the project have pulled together to make this a successful project.

Some consider CCS’ role here as the heartbeat of GUC. It will bring together customer information, billing, and payments, kicking off all field activities then passing them off to Cityworks. Information will be passed to and/or from EBS, SCADA, Meters, GIS, online collections, the City of Greenville, and many more systems and organizations. All told, there are more than a dozen systems that CCS must integrate with - making it very important that information flows smoothly.

Led by Becky Pope and Elizabeth Sharp with IT, the project team includes people from all sectors of the operating departments as well as Customer Relations, Finance, and IT. The team has tested many scenarios and validated data. Our partners in the project, TMG Consulting, have worked with our team to resolve any issues with integrating the different systems and to ensure CCS meets GUC’s business needs. 

“The cross-departmental team members are very dedicated to the CCS project while still working their jobs in their own departments,” said Becky. “The multitude of hours the team has invested will position GUC for a smooth transition to CCS.”

Testing will continue through November with training set to begin in December. The role-based training sessions will be conducted in person, with hands-on activities and recorded for playback and reference. Current CC&B users will be trained on the differences between CC&B and CCS.

A final Go/No-Go readiness check will take place on December 19th. At that time, the entire project team (Core, Steering, and Executive Sponsor Teams) will determine if GUC is ready for the January 2024 go-live, which is scheduled to take place on January 15th. Once the change is made, support will still be available to fix any issues and ensure things go smoothly. “We know some issues will come up after go-live,” Becky said, “we have plans in place for support that includes a 90-day stabilization plan and a managed services support contract.”

The Cityworks and CCS projects will both be moving full steam ahead in the coming months with testing, training, and go-lives. Be on the lookout for additional communication from the project teams and here in Spotlight.