Press Information:
Teri Sexton
Miner & Miner
Telephone: 970-223-1888, x191

General Information: info@miner.com

Fort Collins, CO -- CoServ Electric (CoServ), a non-profit electric cooperative serving areas of Northern Texas for more than sixty-six years, has recently completed an entirely out-of-the-box implementation of ArcFM for both its electric and gas business units using M&M's MultiSpeak Electric Distribution Model and ArcGIS Gas Distribution Model, respectively.

The cooperative serves more than 90,000 electric residential and commercial customers and about 25,000 gas customers in its service area that includes parts of Collin, Denton, and four surrounding counties. In addition, CoServ has been growing at a rate of approximately 700 new electric meters and 400 new gas meters each month. CoServ wanted a facilities assets management system that was dynamic enough to grow and adapt with its changing needs. They chose Miner & Miner's ArcFM MultiSpeak Solution because of its open architecture and ease of implementation.

The highly proficient and knowledgeable Information Systems (IS) staff at CoServ was able to carry out the implementation on their own and had the utility up and running with the new system in just over two months. Data clean up and migration was performed in-house as well.

The ArcFM Solution's open architecture provided the flexibility CoServ needed to meet its current business needs as well as its plans for future development. “ArcFM is a tremendous information access tool that will allow us to trouble shoot more quickly and ultimately provide better service to our customers,” says John Long, IS Manager for CoServ. “The out-of-the-box nature of the ArcFM Solution is what helped make an enterprise GIS a reality for CoServ.”

Because M&M's MultiSpeak Solution is pre-configured and ready to use as is, utilities such as CoServ are able to deploy a fully functioning enterprise GIS in a short period of time without requiring the resources needed to develop and deploy a custom data model. ArcFM has provided CoServ a more robust system with the full functionality of a geodatabase, and tools and business rules for editing and improved data management. By allowing information to be distributed across the enterprise with greater ease and efficiency, ArcFM brings significant business value to CoServ. The cooperative reports having already experienced considerable timesaving benefits by having easy and immediate access to information when it is needed. User acceptance is very high and departments are excited about the new functionality and streamlining of processes that ArcFM has brought to their business operations.

CoServ now has five full-time editors maintaining and editing the system data that is accessed by departments throughout the cooperative, including dispatch, operations, and engineering. Dispatch can now easily trouble-shoot problems in the field and convey pertinent information to work crews, which helps CoServ to more quickly restore power during outage incidents. In Operations, having information at their fingertips allows users to perform basic functions more efficiently. Engineering analysis practices have been simplified and made more effective as well.

CoServ has also purchased M&M's Network Adapter product and has plans for implementation following finalization of MultiSpeak 2.2. Network Adapter will provide a key integration to Milsoft's WindMil product. The cooperative anticipates even greater return on investment as additional systems are brought on line.