City of Niles: Small City Leverages the Power of Technology
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- DocuWare
- TIFFMAKER
Tech Stack
- OCR technology
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Cities & Municipalities
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Fraud Detection
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The City of Niles is a small town located in the southwest corner of Michigan, just north of the Indiana state line and only 90 minutes from downtown Chicago. The City of Niles and the surrounding Niles Townships govern a combined population of 33,000 providing essential municipal, police, and electrical services for the area. The City of Niles is unique in that it supplies its residents with not only water and sewer services, but electricity as well. Electrical billing is very complex and the Utilities department struggled to fulfill customer inquires and perform internal audits.
The Challenge
The City of Niles, Michigan, provides its residents with water, sewer, and electricity services. The Utilities department was struggling to fulfill customer inquiries and perform internal audits due to the complexity of their billing software and electrical rates. They were unable to view or recreate old bills, and only had access to the dollar amount of the bill. Detailed information such as the rate, meter number, service location, and address was essentially lost. When electrical rates changed, the software was reprogrammed with a new rate structure, making adjusting the rate or recreating an old bill impossible. The department wanted to implement a flexible document management system that could grow and change with the department’s changing needs.
The Solution
The City of Niles is using DocuWare to store utility bills and utility applications, police incident reports, and financial documents. DocuWare’s TIFFMAKER print driver is used to import a copy of each bill into DocuWare. The images are able to be automatically indexed using OCR technology. The staff can also do a full-text search on all the information contained on the bill such as the meter number, service locations, and billing address. Looking up old bills and other information is now a very simple process, instead of a series of “best guesses.“ DocuWare is also used to store a permanent record of change of service request forms. The system is also helping reduce fraud. When an individual comes in to set up their electric service their application and a form of ID such as a driver’s license or green card are stored in DocuWare.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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