BOULDER, CO, & TORONTO, Canada, Oct. 25, 2005 -- The city of Boulder, Colo., has selected the CIS Infinity® software offered by Advanced Utility Systems Corp. to replace its aging customer information and billing system. The city's water utility provides services to about 114,000 residents within and immediately surrounding the city limits, which translates into about 28,300 separate billing accounts, billed on a monthly basis. The Utility Billing Office provides billing, collection and customer service functions for the water, wastewater and storm water/flood management utilities.
Boulder's current utility billing system is an in-house application that was originally developed in the 1980s and was modified to run in a client/server environment. The city began the search for a new CIS and billing application because of the age and limitations of the current system, and in anticipation of a new water budget billing requirement due to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2007.
In a water budget approach, each customer gets an allotment of water (water budget) that reflects each customer's indoor and outdoor watering needs. This approach will change the methodology used to calculate the water consumption charges while the service charge calculation will remain the same.
Cliff Hall, CIS project manager with the city of Boulder said this about the selection of CIS Infinity: "We completed a rigorous search for a new CIS, investigating several options and concluded that CIS Infinity provided the best fit with our needs. We are confident that CIS Infinity will be able to efficiently and effectively handle the city's needs."
The unique design of CIS Infinity's rate engine will give the city complete control over the design and model of their rates. CIS Infinity's complex rate engine uses extensive normalization of the rate structure to allow for virtually unlimited rate configuration.
"CIS Infinity's rate engine has proven its flexibility across a wide variety of organizations, from large investor-owned utilities to the small municipal utilities," said Patricia Sorbara, president and CEO of Advanced. "We are pleased to add the city of Boulder to our growing client roster and look forward to a long and beneficial partnership into the future," continued Sorbara. The city of Boulder is the third client of Advanced in the State of Colorado along with Englewood and Westminster, Colo.
The implementation in Boulder will consist of three phases, with the full implementation of CIS Infinity planned for the first phase to ensure the City has a modern system to undertake current business. The second phase will include the implementation of CustomerVu™, a web-based, customer self-serve module that operates in conjunction with CIS Infinity and the third phase will include configuration of CIS Infinity to handle the water budget billing requirements.
Advanced Utility Systems Corp. (www.ausc.com) is a privately owned and operated software and services company in Toronto, Canada. Founded by three partners the company has grown from its 1997 start-up to serve more than 65 North American and Caribbean water, electric, and natural gas utilities with its billing and customer information solution, CIS Infinity. Advanced recruits seasoned utility and technology staff to bolster its implementation and support teams. Today, all of Advanced's core teams are replete with industry veterans who bring deep technical and business expertise to Advanced and its clients. Advanced has built its organization around its core competency: serving utilities' needs with state-of-the-art software and support. With approximately 90% of its staff devoted specifically to development, support, and customer service, Advanced has the technical strength of a large multi-solution vendor with the focus and commitment of a dedicated partner.
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