Utegration

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company in brief detail.

We operate in the utilities industry all around the country. We are involved in electric, gas and also gas  and oil pipelines.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am a manager here. I am involved with our data analytics group.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge you were trying to address?

We had a major skill gap on some data analytics tools that we wanted to utilize. We brought Utegration in on a staff augmentation contract. They are needed for their SAP expertise. Our staff augmentation will run long term since it has gone well so far.

What was your company’s business goal for the staff augmentation?

The overall business goal is to track service and sales in real time. We need to be able to help our sales people get projects started quicker with less delay. We also need to help our service trucks get to the right areas on time. Many of our service areas are isolated so it’s not easy to get there quickly.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Utegration to work with?

They had worked with our CIO on another project. He knew them from before when he was working for a different firm. They have a very solid reputation in this field. We trusted them and decided to hire them based on previous work and an internal recommendation.

What technologies were used?

We are using SAP and SAS. I think there are smaller platforms as well.

Can you describe the scope of the work in more detail?

They also do some predictive modeling to track weather and storms. Weather is very important in our business for service issues and project delays. They can also do predictive modeling for oil and natural gas extraction.

They also provide Web intelligence as a small part of the engagement. They can work with our web site and system to find trends and help improve efficiency. We look at return on investment since we invested in smart meters and grids. My company has invested in core technologies, and wants to save money on sending out crews and trucks to different service areas

When will the project be completed?

I think it will go on through 2015 at least. We may expand from eight full-time employees this year to 10 next year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What are the results of the engagement so far?

They have done a good job delivering high-skilled resources at the top of their team. They are small enough that they seem more personal with their service. They aren’t too busy to take our call when we call their leaders. They have put together a nice team for us with a blend of junior, middle, and senior people.

I am very happy with the work so far and would like to expand. This will be a long-term engagement that should reap major benefits.

When working with Utegration, what is unique or special about them compared to other vendors?

They can do dashboards, BOBJ, and crystal reports. They can go beyond their core competencies such as bringing on a change management champion. They can handle so many different projects, even things that aren’t related to data analytics.

They hired a change management champion without complaint. That is far from their usual work but they handled it well. They are flexible with the software that they use. They don’t push us to one platform and can quickly adapt to new offerings.

Looking back on the project, is there any area that you think they could improve upon, or maybe you would do differently?

They could improve their initial coordination on large engagements. Things were a little rough in the beginning because both sides didn’t know what to expect and how to plan. It ended up well and this is a minor issue.