The Client
A Mississippi-based electric power association is an electric distribution cooperative serving 19,000 meters in northern Mississippi. Electric cooperatives are private, not-for-profit businesses governed by their consumers (known as “consumer-members”). Two federal requirements for all co-ops, including electric co-ops, are democratic governance and operation at cost. This means that every consumer-member can vote to choose the board that oversees the co-op and the co-op cannot overcharge its consumers.
The Challenge
The association needed an accurate and efficient way to streamline the process of tracking equipment kept at their customers’ physical locations, also known as customer-premises equipment (CPE). The lack of a tracking system was causing the association to experience service delays to customers and stalled revenue growth.
Brett, the association’s director of information technology, wanted a centralized solution that could be accessed from anywhere, at any time, including when team members were out in the field or at a customer’s home.
The Solution
After researching their options, Brett chose an inventory management solution from Wasp Barcode Technologies. “The setup and training for this software is extremely easy,” said Brett. “We quickly remove and add inventory to the system.” With the new software in place, the team can now easily determine how and when to order new CPE equipment.
The Result
Initially, the association was using the software simply to track CPE. However, once the team became more familiar with the software, their use of the software expanded.
“As we have brought on a software engineer, we can do more complex usage of the system, including API usage for integration,” said Brett.
According to Brett, the team finds it very easy to retrieve information from the system as well as easy-to-use.
