Idaho Powers new customer application with IBM S/390

Somers 23 Mar 00 In the recently deregulated energy market, Idaho Power Company is using information technology from IBM to seize new market opportunities. Idaho Power is replacing its 20-year-old customer accounting system with a new enterprise resource planning application running on IBM S/390 enterprise servers.

The new system, capable of handling more than a million transactions a day, will enable Idaho Power to improve response times and accuracy for vital services such as customer tracking and billing, customer coordination and history, as well as usage and meter reading.

The new system is also expected to decrease the amount of redundant data entry and manual data manipulation procedures by Idaho's customer service representatives. A data warehouse under development will allow Idaho Power to analyze data to help forecast usage and spot potential meter reading problems. Eventually, the new system will expand to the Internet and allow customers to access their accounts directly from the Web.

The new Customer Information System (CIS+) application, which is expected to go live in November, is from SPL WorldGroup and will run on IBM S/390 servers using OS/390 operating system and IBM's DB2 database software. Idaho Power plans to deliver the Web capabilities using Java technology and UNIX System Services for OS/390. In addition to the new application, Idaho now is running a Passport Inventory work management system and Peoplesoft financials on the S/390. The OS/390 and DB2 combination is expected to reduce storage requirements and system operating costs.

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