Waterford, a suburban township nestled in Southeastern Connecticut, enjoys close proximity to the bustling cities of Boston and New York, as well as the vibrant communities of Hartford and New Haven. Spanning 33 square miles and boasting scenic waterfront boundaries, this charming town is home to around 20,000 residents.

The Waterford Utility Commission operates to provide adequate, affordable, and safe water supply to the residents of Waterford. The Utility Commission owns approximately 146 miles of water mains, wastewater collection systems, and related appurtenances. All wastewater generated in Waterford is conveyed to the central Wastewater Treatment Facility in New London Connecticut, who contributes to the maintenance of Waterford’s systems. All Waterford residents are direct customers of the City of New London Public Utilities.

Challenges

Prior to implementing Impresa, the Utility Commission encountered limitations in the configurability and flexibility of their billing system. In face of these limitations, the Utility Commission required to develop multiple manual processes to handle their business’ complex needs.

The previous billing system was unable to process deduct meter workflows to apply customer credits in the manner outlined and required by the Commission’s policy, causing the need for deduct meters to be tracked and processed in a spreadsheet external to the billing system. The previous billing system was also unable to apply partial payments and past due balances to accounts as statutorily required, resulting in the Utility Commission creating additional processes outside of the billing system to properly credit past due and judgement accounts.

The Utility Commission was also challenged by the rigidity of the billing processes. Paper bills were generated for all customers at the end of each quarter and mailed in a single series with no option for cycle billing or consideration for paperless billing, nor for automatic or credit card payments.

Together these challenges lead the Utility Commission to search for a more robust system that would allow increased efficiencies and exemplary customer service.

Implementation and results

The selection of Impresa was seamless and systematic, with inHANCE personnel present at Waterford’s locations for all parts of the selection and implementation process. The challenges of manual processing found resolution through the highly customizable features of Impresa. The inHANCE Professional Services team was able to create custom programming to track sewer deduct meters inside the Impresa software and apply credits to the eligible portion of the bill. The team also leveraged the highly configurable nature of Impresa to overcome the challenge regarding the application of partial payments to past due accounts by creating a program to apply payments in required order based on age and type of charge.

Impresa helped the Utilities Commission overcome the burden of quarterly billing by introducing the practice of billing by cycle and route. Increasing the frequency of billing allowed customers to better understand and budget for their water and sewer usage. It also smoothed out the office staff's workflow by reducing the burden of processing all customer payments within a short time frame.

The Utility Commission also implemented and integrated Impresa to one of inHANCE’s preferred payment processors, presenting customers with a new wealth of convenient payment and billing options. By offering digital payment options, customers are found to be more satisfied and staff are better able to focus on other mission critical tasks.