Cox Communications Achieves Millions in Productivity Savings with webMethods Business Process Manage

Keeping competitive is critical for Cox—like all telecom companies. To lower costs, Cox needs to update a nearly defunct work-order management system.
Replacing the system also will help Cox increase customer satisfaction when its
3,500 technicians are on site, installing or repairing video, telephone and high-speed Internet service.
Cox uses the webMethods Business Process Management (BPM) Suite to create a new field-service portal known as iWerks. An easy-to-use tabbed environment integrates with a hosted work-order management system, called ETADirect, to revolutionize Cox's productivity and customer service in the field. The BPM Software solution gives Cox a platform to build even more productivity-enhancing solutions in the future.
Adding up BPM Benefits
• By saving 10 minutes per tech per day, Cox expects $4.4 million in annual productivity gains, nearly $40 million in net present value
• iWerks up and running faster than expected—in less than two months
• Project aligns with Cox's process excellence strategy, thanks to end-to-end BPM and Service-Oriented Architecture lifecycle governance
• Quality design assured due to guaranteed design-time governance
• Assets can be re-used in future projects
• Collaboration improves with a cross-project view of service development
Increasing productivity and improving quality
With an aging work-order management system, Cox Communications was looking for another solution that would help keep field technician costs low and provide the necessary flexibility and extendibility to introduce even more productivity solutions into the business.
"We needed a system that would keep up with the ever-changing capabilities we wanted our techs to have at their fingertips," says Mark Leuenberger, Director of Field Service Technology. "The goal for the new capability was a time savings of up to 10 minutes per tech per day. Although the primary business challenge was the need for productivity improvements, a strong secondary challenge was the need to extend tools and capabilities to the techs that would help ensure quality. We wanted to make sure we met a customer's needs the first time."
iWerks is an "all-in-one" system. According to Dziczkowski, "the overall solution has proven itself in the field as we continue to deploy it across the enterprise."