Hassan Muheisen

Integrated Customer Complaints Centre & GIS Based Maintenance Management System

ANIS (Amman Network Information System) is part of a corporate GIS project at WAJ. The introduction of computerised, partly GIS based business applications in Greater Amman, resting on different platforms and spread over more than 10 locations is illustrated on the example of the new Customer Complaints Centre (CCC), developed under ORACLE, and integrated with the front-end, ARCVIEW based Maintenance Management System (MMS), both related and exchanging information with the ANIS core unit, responsible for maintenance, updating and editing of all network and cadastral maps under ARCINFO. The maintenance of GIS database systems, combining ARCINFO/ARCVIEW and ORACLE environments requires not only integration, but as well data integrity between GIS features and RDBMS data on the ORACLE side .CCC & MMS have been introduced in an environment not accustomed and susceptible to such complex systems, but the success of modules like MMS in the daily work process illustrates, that user/friendly applications are immediately accepted and useful on all hierarchical levels of WAJ .

INTRODUCTION

The most pressing needs and priorities of WAJ in the ANIS implementation were

• Improvement of customers relations / management
• Introduction of a computerised maintenance / complaints management for more than 270.000 customers and 60,000 complaints per year for only Greater Amman area .
• Establishment of a monitoring and follow up system for maintenance & repair division..
• Additionally, the Ministry of Water & Irrigation wanted to introduce a country wide Customer Complaints Services System.

ANIS/OMS took the challenge and started development of an integrated concept, consisting of pure database applications for the country wide service and a combined GIS/ ORACLE database environment for Greater Amman area .

This approach had to be taken as digital cadastral maps are only available for Greater Amman area, but not for the rest of the country.

Description Of The Integrated CCC & MMS System

Obstacles of the Existing Manual Procedures

• Customer complaints are difficult to be monitored and controlled manually
• The customer should know all types of complaints , all telephone no’s for maintenance division and to which maintains division he should call for his complaints types.
• Within the manual system there is no unique reference for customer complaints
• Customer complaints cannot be geographically located
• Slowness of manual work (Response time is very high).
• Inaccurate maps, resulting in no use of maps.
• Maintenance boundaries not available on maps.
• Poor coordination between different departments in AGWA.
• Collected information on complaints and repairs not used in the business process and planning of AGWA

Objectives of the New Integrated CCC-MMS System

The function of each subsystem is described as follows.

• Improve Customer relations by providing only one central complaint telephone no. for the whole country
• Stream line customer - MOWI information flow
• Introduce complaint monitoring & controlling procedures at MOWI level
• Clear up & increase the transparency in the complaints procedures
• Monitor the performance of the private operator in AGWA
• More up-to date, accurate, and reliable information.
• Reduction of the response time.
• Targeted investment planning for rehabilitation projects
• Better customer service.
• Higher - quality products such as maps and statistical reports.
• Ability to estimate the cost for each repair.
• Controlling the teams and monitoring the network repairs
• Increased productivity of individual workers.

Solution

The Customer Complaints Centre System (CCC) was developed under ORACLE and integrated with the front-end, ARCVIEW based Maintenance Management System (MMS), both related and exchanging information with the ANIS (Amman Network Information System) core unit which is responsible for updating and editing of all network and Cadastral maps under ARCINFO.

The overall integration of ANIS , MMS and CCC is shown in below:

The Complaints Center CCC will receive, dispatch, monitor and follow up the customer complaints for the whole country .The basic concept of the center is focused on improving the customer oriented services, accuracy & transparency enables closed integrated information cycles, speed up response time ,monitoring & control of the different functions. The customer is neither interested nor has the will to find out the responsible WAJ unit for his request or complaint. In this respect, the CCC acts as a liaison between the customer and WAJ line functions ,therefore according to the information taking from the customer , CCC is programmed to dispatch the complaints automatically to the concerned WAJ unit. The following screen shows main data entry screen of CCC.

The Centre accepts customer complaints that are related to the water network (i.e. pipe burst, no water, realignment of water pipes), sewerage network complaints, illegal water consumption, no bill delivered to customer and water quality related complaints .These complaints are stored on the database and the complaint information transfer from CCC to the various divisions and vice versa can be done using the conventional way (i.e. fax or fax modem card) or by means of electronic information transfer in the cases where MMS exists, with ArcView reading the complaints directly from the Oracle server in the Centre through telephone line / TCPIP protocol and ODBC drivers

MMS is an ANIS integrated, operational front end system intended to support all Maintenance Divisions in efficient planning, monitoring and execution of repair services. The system allows the Maintenance Division to

• Record and track complaints
• Create and process work orders sheets , including maps
• Enter and track daily activity information and produce a wide range of resource utilisation and other reports regarding the maintenance activities.

MMS further provides valuable information to WAJ management in respect of targeted investment planning, management contract monitoring / control and customer services.

All of the maintenance activity data is stored in database form. However, most of the functions of MMS are accomplished using customized Arcview GIS software. The system is closely integrated with the Oracle based Customer Complaints Center (CCC) at the Ministry.

The following screenshot shows work order sheet of MMS application.

Communication between MMS and CCC

The communication between the MMS & CCC applications will be through Modems connected to telephone lines, MMS user will log in to CCC through SqlNet / TCP/IP and ODBC driver, once it is linked to the CCC Oracle, MMS imports the table which contains the total no of received complaints. MMS user then generate the work orders to start the repair action, when it is completed MMS user will send a feedback message by MMS Oracle through dial-up connecto CCC Oracle to close the cycle.

Implementation

The MMS at the maintenance was developed for end users without background and knowledge about computers. After an initial training of existing staff at the Maintenance Division and after a test period, the speed of the response and the quick production of work order sheets was tested in various configurations .

The implementation had to consider the existing procedures and started at the maintenance division level, as all complaints in respect of leaks and no-water were received there.

MMS was installed in Sep 98 at Ras el-Ain maintenance division first, tested for 3 months, evaluated and necessary modifications to the application made.

On March 99, Ain Ghazal maintenance division was added as the second location, total no. of customer covered are about 120.000, only 4 PC’s were needed, no additional staff employed. Intelligent programming allowed the use of relatively low end hardware (166MHz), still achieving fast response & performance.

CCC had to be established in the Ministry of water and irrigation, the 5 PC’s + 1 server were installed in Dec. 98. The needed personnel requirements delayed the actual start of the system to Mid February 1999.

The table below shows some key data of MMS/CCC implementation

Results

MMS

A total no. of 2187 complaints were received during the test period.

The evaluation yielded very positive results and fully justifies the implementation of MMS in all AGWA maintenance divisions, as:

• Response time and recording of complaints was reduced from 15 minutes to 2 minutes per complaint
• Work order sheets produced out of Arcview had an accuracy of complaint location within the sheet of 97%.
• Work preparation was reduced to minutes and control of staff performance greatly improved.
• Maintenance and construction activity related labour, materials and equipment tracking will provide accessible, up-to-date and accurate information to the decision makers.
• The analysis of leaks in Arcview could identify places with highly corroded pipe lines,low team performance and low quality repairs( 13 complaints within 19 days), this providing an excellent decision making basis for the management.
• By visualising and showing leakage points on maps MMS revealed that the repair frequencyin rehabilitated and new networks in contract 1a area was not different from old areas. Site checks exposed that the old network was not properly disconnected . Since rectifying this problem 2 maintenance teams could be shifted to other areas, as no reports on new leaks were received after proper disconnection.
• The proper geographic documentation provided the proof that was the 90% of leaks are on service connections and that a replacement in a pilot area (Polyethylene pipes instead of steel pipes) showed no leaks two years after . With those results, WAJ can revise the rehabilitation strategy and reduce investments considerably

A second evaluation test for MMS application was done within the last two weeks to monitor the acquaintance of the staff with and stability of the system. For two weeks the data entry staff were working with MMS without any technical problems and outside assistance. The performance of the staff was very good, all complaints were entered to the computer, updates of landmarks and street names done which indicates the stability of the system.

The table below shows the Comparison Between Old and New Procedures

Customer Complaints Centre (CCC)

The system was not in operation for long but some results already prove the usefulness, but hint as well towards some bottlenecks:

• More than 9 different organisational units in WAJ Amman were involved, thus broadening the customer complaints services beyond the pure maintenance & repair issues.
• Most complaints are related to "no water" which indicates that the operations management and intermittent supply regime needs to be improved, and could use CCC / MMS data for more precise supply management.
• Although the accuracy rate in the location of complaints is above 90%, the pure database environment in CCC, without using maps for visualizing the geographic location seems to be a deficiency.
• The introduction of digital maps and address confirmation moduls like MMS will definitely improve the accuracy, but need considerable investment in map preparation.

Total no of 1373 complaints received and entered onto CCC Database as follows between February & March 1999:

.

CONCLUSION

The easy use and the extremely positive results allow implementation of the MMS on country wide level within a short time period of only one year.  The intensive preparation through detailed workstudies, organisational changes snd the tight integration to the business process are the basis of success.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The maintenance management system had its roots on the leak repair team workstudies done by WAJ-OMS which exposed the deficits and shortcomings of the maintenance management & operations.  Its further successful implementaiton was only possible through the engagement of the Ain Ghazal Maintenance Division and its Head, Eng. Abdelkarim Naji.

Hassan Muheisen
ANIS Remote Sites Manager, Water Authority of Jordan, PO Box 830752 Amman, Tel. (962-6-5925731), (962-6-5666111, ext. 131), E-mail:  Hassan_Kiswani@pmuoms.index.com.jo