1. A collaboration of:
Reaching New Levels of Customer
Service and Billing Accuracies with
Advanced Exception Management
Brooke Warren
Atmos Energy

2. • Headquartered in Dallas,
TX
• 3 million natural gas
distribution customers
• 1,400 communities in 8
states
• 4,800 employees
• Unregulated and pipeline
businesses
www.atmosenergy.com
Company Overview
Page 2

3. Drivers for Change
 Legacy systems not well designed for our Contact
Center agents
 Back office work is manually intensive
 Dispatch operations demanding more than current
version supports
 Disjointed reporting and analytic tools
 Changes to current systems take long and are
expensive
 Legacy systems no longer supported by the vendor
Page 3

4. Project Objectives
 Configurable system screen flows, data layouts and reference
information that facilitate quick and accurate calls.
 Robust customer self service tools for simple transactions.
 Intelligent revenue transaction processing that limits manual
exceptions.
 Service dispatch tools that allow optimized service order
scheduling and routing.
 Reporting and analytics to proactively manage productivity.
 Standardized processes where possible to simplify and potentially
automate work activities.
 A flexible systems architecture that allows enhancements to be
made more quickly and efficiently.
Page 4

5. Guiding Principles for the ProjectGuiding Principles
 Standardization
 Simplicity
 Scalable
 Maximize the System
 Scope
 Schedule
 Budget
 Communication Live AtmoSpirit
Page 5

6. High Level Project Scope
SAP CR&B
Customer Information
System
- Call Center
- Billing & Rates
- Credit & Collections
- Sales & Marketing
SAP
Business Intelligence
- Executive Dashboards
- Operational Reports
- Transactional Reports
Customer Self Service
- Aligned with CIS functions
- Standard, Integrated
- Flexible, Scalable
ClickSchedule/SAP Mobility
- Scheduling
- Dispatch
- Device Management
Page 6

7. Project Timeline
 28 Month Implementation
 Single Go-Live, May 1, 2013
 8 Mock Data Conversions (including 3 full dress rehearsals)
 Long, Iterative Test Cycle
 Very Tight Scope Control
Q1 2011 Q2 2011 Q3 2011 Q4 2011 Q1 2012 Q2 2012 Q3 2012 Q4 2012 Q1 2013 Q2 2013
2011 2012 2013
Analyze
Design
Build
Test
Operational Readiness
Test & Deploy
Page 7

8. Lessons Learned
 BPEM governance
 Right size what you are validating on from the beginning
 Train your employees on how they will perform their job.
Don’t just train on system screens.
 Focus on your supervisors – make sure they understand
the new system and processes and know how to manage
in the new environment
 Have a team solely focused on exception processing and
management!
Page 8

9. Exception Management – Main
Challenges
After go live of a new SAP system, there are 3 primary issues that
manifest and must be efficiently managed and resolved:
 Usability
 Issue Identification / Reporting
 Exceptions
These issues lead to:
 Delays in realizing the benefits of implementing a new customer
relationship and billing system and maximizing your investment
Page 9

10. Lesson Learned 1 – Don’t forget
Exception Management
Back office personnel at Atmos are extremely pleased with BDEx's
solution which provides:
 Unique customer centric view
 Significant reduction of average handling time (AHT) for exception resolution
 Immediate effectiveness and efficiency gains by users who are new to the system
 Ability to close all issues associated with a particular Business Partner from a
central location
 BDEx's automatic closure conditions
“I find BDEx to be a wonderful tool. It’s like having a mini-assistant to help you get
to where you need to go faster without having to remember all of the t-codes. When
I’m working on any type of research, we always go to BDEx first so that we can see
everything and have the ability to take whatever action is needed straight from
there.”
Page 10

11. Lesson Learned 2 – You’re going to
need a way to quickly dig out!
OOPS! That change created how many BPEM cases?!?!?
 The combination of BDEx and MDR-TOR (Tolerance Optimization
Reporting) provides post configuration change benefits to:
 Quickly deal with and reduce large numbers of exceptions
(implausible and outsorts)
 Close the associated BPEM cases
 The standard exception reporting provided by BDEx has made
management reporting a lot better and easier
“Great tool in being able to see all objects related to each other in one
location (i.e. you can pull up a contract and see all the BMD and TMD that
goes with it such as contract account, installation, premise,). Being able to
see previous work history is nice so that you can quickly see past issues on
the account, along with who was working it.”
Page 11

12. Lesson Learned 3 – What If, What
Now?
Continuous Improvement
 MDR-TOR provides pre-configuration analysis to determine how a
configuration change would increase or decrease case creation
 Greater intelligence to help us analyze our exceptions to reduce
exception counts via configuration refinement
 Helps to avoid unnecessary exception back-logs
“Basis Technologies has been one of the best companies to work
with. They have been very responsive, easy to work with and
accommodating with client specific requests. They are truly a partner
in every sense of the word."
Page 12

13. Questions
Page 13

14. Thank You!!!
 Contact Information
 Brooke Warren – brooke.warren@atmosenergy.com
 Basis Technologies
 Booth #30
 Karl Pringle – karl.pringle@basistechnologies.com
Page 14

15. A collaboration of:
Brooke Warren
Atmos Energy
Brooke.Warren@atmosenergy.com