Pump It Up! Data Management on Steroids

No Programming Required!

Trinita Houser

Dallas Water Utilities

What’s Covered: Automation and Data Quality Management

Key Topic 1 – Bad Data Happens!

Key Topic 2 – Doing More With Less

Key Topic 3 – Using a Mass Data Upload Tool Summary

Questions

Introduction & Overview: Dallas Water Utilities Operated by the City of Dallas, Texas

9th largest city in the U.S.

Population of over 1.3 million

Service area – 384.7 square miles

Provide water, wastewater,

sanitation and sewer services with

327,000 customer accounts in 31

communities.

Implemented SAP IS-U for utility

billing system in 2008

* Source: US Census Bureau Population Estimates Program 7/9/09

Item Description

Go Live February 2008

SAP Version ECC 6.0

SAP Module/App/Environment IS-U, CIC0, FICA, FICO, MM, SD, DM, CS, BW, PI and Solution Manager

SAP Support services provided Billing, Collections, Permits, Applications, Self Reported Fees/Taxes , Inventory Management, Service Order Management and Account Maintenance

Water Utilities Services Water, Wastewater, Sanitation, Sewer

Other City Departments on SAP Fire, Police, Code Compliance, & Aviation

Number of utility customer accounts 327,000

Number of SAP users 475

SAP Support team 55

Data Management team 3

Overview: SAP Environment

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Managing Data in a High Demand Environment

5

Be Proactive!

“A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting

happens in it because the crises have been anticipated

and have been converted into the routine”.

~Peter Drucker

Bad Data Happens!

6

• Establish systems and procedures to identify and correct bad data

• Identify the root cause of the problem and make corrections before

bad data has a critical impact

• Take action immediately if a critical error occurs, to reduce operational

and customer impact

The Critical Impact of Bad Data

Revenue

Lost

“100,000 customers hit by billing error – cost City $7 million in lost revenue”

Customer Retention/

Acquisition

“Billing error to cost Electric Utility 23 large commercial accounts”

Customer Dissatisfaction

“3,500 customers overbilled – Utilities admit Smart Meter error”

Master Data Errors

&

System Glitches

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Coping with Critical Billing Errors

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Customer Complaints

Operating Cost

Negative Media Attention

Credibility/Trust

Customer Satisfaction

Productivity

Doing More with Less

Loss of Qualified Resources

Budget Restrictions

Lack of Business

Owner Data Accountability

Challenge of Providing High Quality Data Management

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

How Dallas Water Utilities is Doing More With Less

Using Innovation to

“Pump Up” Data Management

Pumping It Up!

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Background

12

• Initial Problem:

o The City of Dallas implemented a custom program in order to comply with the

U.S. Postal Service Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) and National

Change of Address (NCOA) requirements.

• Results:

o Automate updates to SAP business partner and address records.

o Reduction in undeliverable returned mail

• Impact: New Problem - 35,000 CASS/NCOA address exceptions

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Being Innovative

13

• Issue: Identifying a solution to upload 35,000 CASS/NCOA

address corrections into SAP.

• Challenge: Limited manpower and budget restrictions

• Solution: Automation - Mass Data Upload Tool

• Evaluated feasible solutions for mass uploading data:

SAP Legacy System Migration Workbench (LSMW)

SAP Computer Aided Test Tool (SeCATT)

Build a program in ABAP

Procure a third-party tool

• Prepared a business case to support recommendation

• Obtained approval to proceed

Adding Muscles to Our Data Management: Project Initiation

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

• Elicited Business Requirements:

o Defined the functional requirements of the solution

o Defined conditions on which the solution must operate

• Evaluated Solutions:

o Identified (3) applications/vendors that met requirements

o Contacted vendors and obtained overview of product(s)

o Test-drove applications

o Summarized findings

• Obtained approval to make the purchase

Adding Muscles to Our Data Management: Requirements & Analysis

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

• Selected

• Procured Process Runner and Data/Query Extractor

• Developed operational standards and procedures

• Installed Process Runner and Data/Query Extractor

• Trained users – on-site training provided by Innowera

Adding Muscles to Our Data Management: Implementation

9/26/2012 11:15 AM

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Addressing a Critical Error

18

• Issue:

o A transport was applied to SAP for rate proration changes

o Billing error detected during invoice quality check

o Water service charges missing on 8,000 customer invoices

• Impact:

o Billing process halted for 5 days

o Invoices not printed and sent to customers

o SAP Support staff and business users spent hours identifying the root cause of

the problem and searching for a solution.

Estimated that it would take 140 man-hours for manual data-entry correction

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Problem Resolution

19

• Solution:

o Used Innowera Process Runner to reverse the status on 8,000 records

o Backed out the original SAP transport for the proration rate change

o Re-billed and re-printed customer invoices

• Results:

o 8,000 records corrected in 4 hours

• Savings:

o $4,000 direct cost plus additional indirect cost

User Productivity, Operational Efficiencies & Cost Savings

Projects and Results

• Billing Related

Out of Balance

Disconnections

Dunning Infinity Locks

• Reporting and Analysis

MAPSCO

Sanitation Districts

Council Districts

• Address Maintenance:

CASS/NCOA Exceptions

Street Name Changes

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Projects Completed

• 674,609 Master Data update

• 28,566 Billing Adjustments

• 37,047 Addresses Cleansed

• 35,655 Documents Updated

• 11,915 Meter Read uploads

• 7,861 Status Changes

• 3,184 Material Records

User Productivity

• 12 Projects Completed

• 14,800 Man-Hours Saved

Operational Efficiency

• $347,000

• over 9 months

• Return on Investmentrealized in first 2 months

Cost Saving

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Results using Innowera

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Cost Savings

CASS/NCOAExceptions

Council DistrictDesignations

DCAD NumberUpload

Disconnect Doc.Update

Infinity DunningLock Removal

MapscoMeter Read

UploadOut of Balance

Billing

OverlappingPayment Clean-

up

Profit CenterChange

SanitationDistrict Numbers

Serial Numb. &Mfg Change

Total $18,946 $755 $210 $38,006 $2,774 $112,452 $4,201 $2,786 $10,225 $139 $155,193 $1,118

$18,946

$755 $210

$38,006

$2,774

$112,452

$4,201 $2,786

$10,225

$139

$155,193

$1,118

$0

$20,000

$40,000

$60,000

$80,000

$100,000

$120,000

$140,000

$160,000

$180,000

$ S

ave

d

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Putting Our Data Management on Steroids: Time Savings

CASS/NCOAExceptions

Council DistrictDesignations

DCAD NumberUpload

Disconnect Doc.Update

Infinity DunningLock Removal

MapscoMeter Read

UploadOut of Balance

Billing

OverlappingPayment Clean-

up

Profit CenterChange

SanitationDistrict

Numbers

Serial Numb. &Mfg Change

Total 905 34 10 1,781 130 5,275 198 137 488 7 5,809 53

905

34 10

1,781

130

5,275

198 137

488

7

5,809

53

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

Ho

urs

“Making SAP Data Management easier using Microsoft Excel”

Innowera Process Runner

• SAP Certified partner

• Allows upload or download of data between SAP and Excel

• Supports mass data creation, changes, updates, and verifications

• Works out of the box

• No programming or scripting required

• Easy to use 3-step process to Record, Map and Execute a transaction

• Records standard or custom SAP transactions

• Complies with all SAP security and preserves usual SAP audit trail

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Innowera Process Runner:

Creating a Script:

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Step 1- Record: To Build the Transaction

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Step 2 – Map: To Map SAP Fields to Database Fields

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Step 3 – Execute the Script

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Results: Example with System Messages

9/26/2012 11:14 AM

Key Points

Be Proactive! - implement

solutions to maintain high quality

data

Increase Productivity – The return on investment in

data automation tools outweighs the high staffing cost

for labor-intensive manual data entry processes and/or

expensive programming costs.

Improve the Accuracy, Quality and Reliability of

Information - Routine transactions are made

easier, faster and error–free by utilizing data

automation tools such as Innowera Process

Runner.

Any Questions

Trinita Houser Dallas Water Utilities

Trinita.houser@dallascityhall.com

This was presented at:

SAP for Utilities conference at Hollywood, FL, USA on Sept 10th 2012

A collaboration of: