KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

The Tullahoma Utilities Authority (TUA) Board of Directors gave its approval of the purchase of an outage management system with Milsoft Solutions.

Prior to its meeting on Jan. 24, the TUA board held a study session about Milsoft Solution’s Dispatch Outage Management System with a presentation led by TUA’s Allen Potter. In the presentation he went over with the board how TUA currently handles a system-wide outage event, where every dispatcher logs every call, name, address and so on through a chat system. He said in the first few calls the crews are out while the engineering department will start grouping all the calls and outages by the location of the electric device to create a picture of how many customers are experiencing outages so they know where they need to send to the crews out to next.

Potter showed an example of a call log from February 2021 and what information dispatchers collect to give to the TUA crews as they continue to get calls. He noted that those logs are just those that dispatchers and customer service representatives can get to as hundreds of customers can be calling in.

“It can take an hour and 45 minutes to take every one of those calls,” Potter said.

He said while the team can handle these calls, there are some weaknesses in the current method. Potter said a solution is purchasing an outage management system (OMS) which he defined as “a system of computer-based tools and utilities procedures used to efficiently and effectively to become aware of, diagnose and locate, provide feedback to the affected customers, dispatch the crews, restore the outage, maintain the historical records and compute the statistical indecencies of power outages.”

The system would include interactive voice response (IVR), an automated system used to help gather information from customers. Also with the purchase would be a mobile tool for the line crews to use, which will eliminate the need for a dispatcher after hours.

Potter said having an IVR system would be beneficial during an outage as it would be able to answer more calls to help customers.

“With OMS and IVR, we are eliminating multiple employees answering the phones, logging every outage and having to manually group outages,” Potter said. “The system will do all of that for you.”

He said the OMS will also log every call that comes in and keep the information on record, as well as keep track of records of the crew’s response to an outage. Other benefits he listed included reduced outage times and improved customer service, easy communication with IVR, electronic outage tickets, more efficient use of resources and so on.

After the presentation, members of the board asked questions the system. One of the main questions was would there be a person that can talk to customers, which TUA President Brian Skelton said there would be someone available to during the daytime. According to the memo given to the board, the call answering software was designed to be web based, so it could be used by both TUA in-house personnel and the answering service.

Another question of concern was if TUA had a log of customers who have medical equipment and Potter said it will show up on the customer’s information when they report an outage.

During the meeting, Skelton explained that Milsoft has worked with TUA to defer the initial software cost until the next budget as it was not originally budgeted for this fiscal year, and TUA would only pay for the training and setup and will pay for the rest of it in July. With the purchase of the system will include the ongoing costs of software support for $8,950 a year and IVR for $1,400 per month plus $0.05 per call.

Per the memo, the quote by Milsoft given to TUA for the system includes the initial purchase of the dispatch OMS, $38,750, mobile solution for line crew, $6,000, and the training and setup, $11,250. Per Skelton, to help pay for the system TUA had canceled part of its right-of-way spraying for the fall and will reallocate $15,000 to “engineering software” and fund other up-front costs with not budget increase.

The board unanimously approved the agreement with Milsoft for an OMS with IVR, with $15,000 moved from spraying to software in the FY23 electric budget and with the installation charge in being paid in the FY24 electric budget.