Santee Cooper, the state utility of coastal South Carolina, has contracted with iFactor Consulting to provide an upgrade of their existing PowerOn OMS and the incorporation of several iFactor supporting software products.
The project started this winter with the development and integration of iFactor Storm Center and iFactor’s call taking application for PowerOn. Storm Center
is a world-class web-based product designed to provide the public with up to date outage information and reporting tools. Through this portal, the public will be able to view accurate outage information with the appropriate details for public consumption. Customers will also be able to report outages and view restoration information.
Included in the first phase of the project is the incorporation of the web-based call taking application for PowerOn. The call taking application integrates directly into the PowerOn OMS Oracle schema to enable customer service representatives the ability to search for customer accounts, view call and outage history, log new calls and manage callbacks. PowerOn call taking and Storm Center were rolled out for internal usage during July. Storm Center will be introduced to the public in September.
This summer iFactor will commence with the PowerOn upgrade which will conclude at the end of the year.
LG&E and KU recently implemented the outage communications module of iFactor’s mobile device applications, a suite of reusable software modules that 
allow utilities to quickly deliver self service solutions to their customers. The free smartphone app is available on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices, and is available in the app store for each specific device. LG&E and KU are the first utilities in the state of Kentucky (and among a small number of utilities in the nation) to offer near real-time outage information in a free smartphone app.
With this new app, customers will have access to the same outage information provided on the LG&E and KU online outage map, Storm Center, which is also powered by iFactor. Outage data is displayed using an interactive Storm Center map, and summary information by county and zip code is available in a chart format. Data from the Storm Center site is delivered directly to the app from the utilities’ outage management system, including estimated restoration times once the outage is assessed by field crews.
“Our smartphone outage map app is our first entry in a larger mobile communications portfolio that will be progressively introduced to customers,” said Greg Thomas, vice president of Energy Delivery – Distribution Operations for LG&E and KU. “Enabling the public to access and view outage information on the go is just another way we are working to enhance our customers’ experiences with us.”
LG&E and KU are currently developing several other mobile communications offerings, including two-way SMS texting, email and phone outage notifications, and in-app alerts.
Join iFactor and Chartwell for a free webinar on the power of mobile engagement, and learn more about harnessing the power of texting, apps, and the web for utility self-service. To learn more, visit our event website and watch this video presentation.
Are you curious to know what iFactor has been up to over the last few months? Check out the summer edition of the Informer!
We are really excited to announce the availability of Storm Center 3, the biggest product upgrade to date. SC3 is packed with changes to enhance the user experience and allow you to deliver more information to customers on a variety of devices. We started with an upgrade to Microsoft Bing Maps version 7, which offers new map tiles, improved map controls, and support for iPhone and Android web browsers. 
We carried the mobile support form Bing through to all of the libraries and features in Storm Center so that the new version is fully supported with the web browsers on iPhones, iPads, and all Android devices. This support goes beyond just “making it work”- Storm Center 3 includes pages and content which automatically optimize for the mobile device with support for dragging and pinching the map to zoom and pan, and touching the icons to see the current information about an outage.
We have also integrated location-based APIs so that Storm Center on a mobile device can automatically zoom to your current location!
In addition to mobile support and the move to Bing Maps 7, we enhanced data flows and formats throughout Storm Center to streamline and minimize the content for use on mobile networks. The combination of these changes will give Storm Center users a great boost in page rendering times, performance, and scalability, with initial tests showing up to a 70% reduction in the data requirements for the application.
We have also integrated a variety of architectural changes and features into the product as fully supported modules. We have enhanced the clustering functionality in SC 3 with support for thematic clusters, which allows us to use different sizes, colors, and labels to distinguish each outage cluster. Our cloud hosting option is now fully integrated with the product, and can be implemented during your upgrade with a simple addition to your annual maintenance fee. 
Likewise, the SC 3 architecture now has full support for enabling optional modules such as animated WeatherBug lightning and radar, Event History tracking, and complete layer management support.
In addition to the outage map and outage summaries, we have also updated the outage reporting framework in Storm Center 3 with full mobile support. This framework allows us to quickly implement web based outage reporting for your customers, with support for access to the forms using both desktop and mobile browsers. With some utilities seeing upwards of 10% of outage reports coming via the web, it is critical to consider enabling this channel to help meet customer expectations and save costs. Thanks to Storm Center 3, you can deliver a combination of high level summaries, informative maps, and account specific reporting and information all to the desktop and mobile web!
For our existing Storm Center customers, an upgrade to version 3 requires that we work with your team to implement the new product on both the application/web services side as well as implementing your web page templates with it. We also need to work with you to implement your content and look and feel on the mobile pages, which are essentially a brand new page template to consider. We can deploy the mobile functionality as a link from your existing mobile website, or can work with you to launch a mobile website using Storm Center outage maps, summaries, and reporting as your initial content. Overall, this upgrade is a very straightforward process which can be completed quickly.
