Portland General Electric, Oregon

Background

Portland General Electric (PGE) operates at numerous locations in the greater Portland area and employs 2,200. PGE frequently sends mailings to its 90,000 customers, as well as to its 900 assigned accounts. Account managers, business analysts, and an administrative staff make up PGE’s management team. The IT department at PGE is comprised of 50 people, all located in downtown Portland in World Trade Center #3.

The Problem

Portland General Electric IT staff frequently found themselves dealing with system-failure caused by PGE’s contact management software. Within the entire network, anytime there was an upgrade to any system, reporting capabilities would fail. Whenever PGE had to update or fix this failure, it basically equated to a complete reinstall of its contact management software. This faulty software made the administrative staff’s computers completely nonfunctional; and eventually the program had to be removed just so administration could make it through a day with functioning desktops.

Portland General Electric was in need of a solution that would eliminate timely and expensive system failures, as well as maximize their existing infrastructure investment(whether an office uses Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Outlook).

The Solution

GroupLink’s ContactWise™ offered PGE contact management capabilities covering all aspects of its operations. PGE’s contact management and support now utilizes the following three-tiered system:

1. Account Managers
With the implementation of ContactWise, PGE Account Managers are now able to keep track of customers on a very in-depth and thorough basis. GroupLink’s ContactWise uses custom functionalities to track specific information with specific customers. Account Managers are required to generate weekly reports; ContactWise allows for the user to add notes in a contacts history to assist in this task. While reports are generally written at the end of the week, managers can now see specific events and their date and time as they happened.

2. Business Analysts
PGE Business analysts function as traveling account managers while visiting any of PGE’s 900 assigned accounts. Alex McCartney is a Business Analyst for Portland General Electric. “GroupLink’s ContactWise provides the ability to input and access information like we have previously not experienced,” said McCartney. “The system allows us to keep track of notes using headings like ‘phone record,’ ‘email,’ ‘site visit,’ ‘association related,’ ‘letter mail,’ and many others.” The level of information available to PGE business analysts has virtually exploded with the implementation of ContactWise.

3. Administrative Staff
PGE’s administrative staff oversees mailing needs associated with contact management for its 90,000 customers. ContactWise provides the staff with the means to quickly and effectively negotiate mailing labels and to mail merge where necessary. Mailers commonly go out to tens of thousands of customers at a time, and GroupLink’s ContactWise makes this task as simple as possible.

Conclusion

The implementation of GroupLink’s ContactWise has been a huge success for Portland General Electric. The ability to take an established and successful investment and expand upon it has added value to an existing successful situation. While eliminating system glitches and crashes, PGE has also expanded its contact management capabilities with ContactWise. Contact management with GroupLink’s ContactWise has translated into saved time, effort, and money for Portland General Electric.