E-BILL AND PAYMENT UPGRADE - Utility Payment …€¦ · E-BILL AND PAYMENT UPGRADE . About the Presenter ... payment date < today + 90 days No existing same amount, ... We already

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Cloud vs. In-House and Package vs. Custom Code

E-BILL AND PAYMENT UPGRADE

About the Presenter

» Dan Richardson

» Senior Software Developer

» I’ve worked on SCG’s various “My Account”

websites since 1999.

» [email protected]

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Size

Largest natural

gas distribution

utility in the US

20,000 square

mile service

territory.

Customers

21.6 Million

customers

5.9 Million active

meters

History

2017 marks the

150th anniversary

of our founding in

1867 in Los

Angeles

About SoCalGas

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SCG My Account History

Original website Smalltalk on OS/2 1998

Migrated to new Smalltalk on Windows 2002

New EBPP – custom UI on vendor package 2006

Added custom portal, more orders, etc. 2009

New business portal and “outside” functions 2015

Replace residential portal and EBPP 2016

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My Account: By the Numbers

2.2 million active My Account website users 1

2.3 million paperless accounts (40%) 2

18 Million payments worth $1 billion last 12 months. 3

10% to 13% web payment annual growth rate 4

41 million bill ready emails over the last year 5

4 million consolidator eBills over the last year 6

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Needed

reliability

improvements

and high

availability

No direct

version

upgrade of

vendor

package

Vendor

application tier

package EOL

Why replace My Account and EBPP

Outdated UI

in appearance

and function

Needed better

UI support for

mobile

devices

Needed

WCAG 2.0 AA

UI support

On old

technology

“stack”

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“Outside” My Account Portal EBPP

1. Registration

2. Login/Logout

3. Remember Me

4. Forgot Username

and/or Password

5. Service Order

6. Start Service

7. Stop Service

8. Transfer Service

9. Check Service

Status

10.Auto Enroll

11.EZ Enroll

Residential Business 1. Create / Edit /

Delete Payment

2. Create / Edit /

Delete Bank Acct.

3. Automatic Monthly

Payment Plan

4. View My Bill

5. Bill History

6. Charges and

Payments

7. Level Pay Plan

1. Start / Stop /

Transfer Service

2. CARE (discount)

Apply / Verify /

Renew / Cancel

3. Payment Extension

1. Many-to-Many

support.

2. Manage User

(Delegate) Access

3. View User Activity

4. Go Paperless

5. Service Order

6. Manage (service) Appointments

7. Analyze Usage / Usage History

8. Compare Bills / Calculate Carbon Footprint

9. Manage My Online Profile

10.Manage Account Information

11.Manage Alerts

12.Add / Remove Account

My Account MATRIX Features and Functions

My Account MATRIX Project Timeline

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1 2 3

4 5

Cloud Based

Software as a

Service Solutions

Cloud Hosted

Packaged

Software

Cloud Hosted

Custom Software

Locally Hosted

Packaged

Software

Locally Hosted

Custom Software

EBPP Replacement Solution Architectures Considered

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RFP Part 1: Functional Requirements

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Capability Description Create One-Time Payment

Check if a bank

account exists. Redirect to add bank account page, if there is no bank account associated.

Get accounts,

amounts, date to pay Call CIS Webservices to get the real time account balance & due date. Also check if there are

any payment arrangements for a given account. If the web service call fails, display the amount

& due date from the last valid bill indexed. Payment arrangement details are not displayed in

case the payment arrangement web service fails. On-screen

verification each Amount >= $1 each Amount < $1,000.000.00 each amount only digits and . If there are multiple payment accounts, ensure that none of them is selected by default. Default

to a payment account if and only if there is only 1 payment account associated.

Server-side

verification each Amount >= $1 each Amount < $1,000.000.00 each amount only digits and . at least one bill account selected exactly one bank account selected payment date is valid date payment date >= today payment date < today + 90 days No existing same amount, date, account payment No more than 1 existing same date, account payment Account is not restricted from pay (cash only) Bank Account is not negative file (returned checks)

RFP Part 2 : Technical Requirements

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Will it work with our single sign on, portal, application server, database,

monitoring tools, etc. 1

Does is support high availability, disaster recovery, load balancing,

datacenter failover, fault tolerance? 2

Does it handle our current volume and expected growth? With what

response time? 3

Does it support role based access controls? Many web user to many bill

account relationships? 4

Security questions such as PCI v3.0 compliance, encryption in transit

and at rest, security event logging. 5

Cloud security questions such as where is it hosted, datacenter security,

security audits, penetration testing, staff access to raw data, etc. 6

What is your snapshot/mirroring/backup strategy? 7

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RFP 3 : Integration Architecture

Selection Criteria (1 of 2)

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Criteria Description Wt. Price - TCO 5 Year Basic 5-year TCO analysis

H Implementation Costs Upfront implementation costs

On-Going Support Costs

(Incremental O&M) On-going support (incl. defect fixes, enhancements),

hosting, transaction, etc. costs

Accounting Analysis Analysis comparing Capital v. O&M cost balance of each

option. H

Contingency Representing confidence level of development

quotes/estimates

Capability Mapping % the solution provides existing capability via Out of the

Box (OOB) /Configuration (remaining % is Custom) H

Solution Maturity Solution provides reliable EBPP functions (payments

processing, etc.) H

Implementation Experience Vendor's experience with integrating solution with similar

approach, architecture, security, volumes, etc. M

Adaptability - Ease Ease of making basic enhancements to the solution M

Adaptability - Cost Cost of making basic enhancements to the solution M

Adaptability - Best Practices Flexibility and ease of adding major industry best practice

enhancements (e.g. Credit Card payments, etc.) M

Selection Criteria (2 of 2)

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Criteria Description Wt. Integration of User Experience Provides seamless customer integration with Portal H

WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Solution developed per WCAG 2.0 AA specifications M

Responsive Design Solution developed to support Responsive design on

Tablet/Mobile H

Ease of Integration Ease of integration for initial implementation of solution H

On-Going Support/ Service

Levels Reliable operation of EBPP application (uptime %, defect

fixes, etc.) M

SCG IT SME Resources Loss of SCG SME resources will not impact project;

Plus the benefit of reallocating to higher value work L

Security Provide a secure solution that meets SCG guidelines H

Network Latency - User

Response Time Impacts SCG Network impact to support hosted solution load;

may impact User Experience (Response Times) M

Disaster Recovery The sophistication of the DR approach meeting the

EBPP Tier2 designation M

Suitability to a SaaS solution

given requirements Ability to meet SCG IT strategic objective of utilizing

cloud based solutions M

SDGE Re-Use Ability for SDGE to re-use all or portions of the solution. L

Maturity of Company Maturity of solution vendor's company L

Selection Results: Custom In-House

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Other options 60% higher 5 year TCO 1

Other options ongoing costs after 5 years 2

Custom had best capability mapping 3

Custom had best integration 4

Custom had best adaptability and customization 5

10% to 35% higher total selection criteria score 6

SCG Specific Considerations (YMMV)

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Custom EBPP reused My Account MATRIX environments

and infrastructure significantly reducing costs 1

We already had an experienced ADF project team from earlier

My Account MATRIX releases 2

We were able to reuse our existing MATRIX development

environment, build system, framework code, etc. 3

We had a Business and IT SME team with a combined

30+ years of custom EBPP experience 4

Most of the previous EBPP implementation was custom,

especially batch, which enabled reuse and easier rewriting 5

Had steadily been replacing previous EBPP package

with custom code even before MATRIX project 6

My Account MATRIX Project Timeline

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MATRIX Development Approach

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Methodology & Process • Methodology - Hybrid (agile/waterfall) using best practices of both

• Testing strategy - Multiple browsers & test phases, testing automation

• Documentation, Reviews, Approvals, demos early on

• Phased implementation where possible

• Solid Requirements & Change Management process

• Daily stand ups

Effort Estimation • Estimates based on solid requirements – not many surprises

• Estimates based on historic data (previous MATRIX phases)

• Resource allocation to support project timeline

• Close monitoring of estimates & milestone dates to avoid slippage & stay within budget

Overall Team Structure

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Team Structure Different Vendors (Separation of Concerns)

Dedicated teams (Creative, Functional, Development, Testing) with formal handoffs

Strong internal leads partnering with vendor’s team leads

Strong Internal SME’s & Ownership

Dedicated support (Network, Operations, DBA, etc.)

Strong sponsorship support and project autonomy

Team Size at Peak (50) Functional/Creative - 3

ADF/Online Development - 12 (4 “component leads”)

User Interface Development - 4

Batch Development - 9 (onsite/offshore)

Architects - 4 (ADF, Batch, Solutions, Infrastructure)

Testing - 14 (7 offshore, 6 onsite – including COT)

Management - 4 (Vendor and SCG, Business PM)

Key Project Artifacts (see Appendix)

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Detailed Requirements and Use Case 1

Functional Wireframe 2

Accessibility Wireframe 3

Mobile Wireframe 4

Error (and Message) Log 5

GUI Design (Desktop and Mobile) 6

Project Result and Lessons Learned

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Project was delivered on time and on budget with a relatively

small number of defects with most fixed during storm 1

Splitting into several major production releases made each a

more manageable size and reduced risk and complexity. 2

Spitting each main release into several rounds of test releases

enabled more overlap in requirements time, design time,

development time, and testing time leveling teams’ workloads

3

Close integration of business unit representatives,

analysts, developers, SME’s, maintenance team, and

testers was crucial for overall success

4

We needed dedicated server, storage, network, security and

other infrastructure team resources available to the project 5

Demo of SCG My Account

» At this point I would like to log on to SCG’s My

Account website and spend a few minutes

showing some of the responsive and

accessibility features. I’ll need a network

connection to do this. If this will not be available,

please let me know and I’ll record a (no audio)

desktop video of this and will send it to you

separately. This was part of my presentation at

Oracle Open World and was well received.

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Q&A and Discussion

» Questions?

» Comments?

» Further information requests?

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Appendix: Detailed Requirements

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Appendix: Use Case 1

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Appendix: Use Case 2

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Appendix: Use Case 3

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Appendix: Functional Wireframe

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Appendix: Accessibility Wireframe

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Appendix: Mobile Wireframe

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Appendix: Error (and Message) Log

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Appendix: Desktop GUI Design

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Appendix: Mobile GUI Design

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Contact Information

» Dan Richardson

» Senior Software Developer

» [email protected]

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