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What’s In This Issue...• Looking Back and Looking Forward page 1...• Date Set for CEO Summit 2016 page 1...• Have You Budgeted for This? page 1...• Welcome to New Customers Who Joined Us in 2015 page 2...• SEDC to Host Member Enrichment Meeting at the NRECA Annual Meeting & TechAdvantage
Expo page 2...• As It Turns Out, It’s a Pretty Big Deal... page 3...• Twisted Yet Not Torn... page 3...• Jessie Abel Named Vice President of Field Implementations page 3...• Territory Managers Welcome a New Team Member to Their Ranks page 4...• Making the Holidays Happy page 4...• RBI’s Energy Bucks Program Has Launched page 5...
Looking Back and Looking ForwardThe beginning of a new year generally makes people stop and reflect back over the past year, and we’re no exception.As it was for a lot of people and in a lot of ways, our 2015 was not that much different from our 2014. We were just as committed to providing high quality customer support, delivering innovative solutions, and – hopefully – making our customers’ jobs a little easier. These are tenets that we aspire to achieve every year, and actually, they form the foundation upon which we stand as a company.
As it turns out, looking forward into the year ahead is a bit different than past years, because 2016 is a milestone year for SEDC. It’s our 40th birthday. (We’ll pause here for rounds of “Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty!”)
What are we doing to celebrate? We’re throwing a big ol’ birthday party and you’re invited! UC2016 is being held in Atlanta this year, and our closing night dinner event will be an all-out celebration. We certainly hope you can attend the user conference this year and join us at our “birthday dinner.” Look for more details about the conference, including registration information, in February. In the meantime, you can start planning your travel and book your hotel rooms today.
Bits & Bytes | Q1 2016 | SEDC | www.sedata.com | 770-414-8400
First Quarter 2016
General Managers and C-level executives should mark their calendars for Summit 2016, which will be held August 7 – 10 at the Marriott Long Wharf in Boston, MA. Registration and hotel details will be available in February.
Why attend Summit 2016? Here’s what one attendee commented in the Summit 2015 follow up survey, “I attended the Summit because it’s the best way for me as a manager to stay on top of the things SEDC is developing for co-ops. I’m better informed and I know what products I can start using right now.”
Have You Budgeted for This?If you’re currently using Remote Payment Terminals, any workstations with the Windows Vista operating system, or our legacy cash register system, plan ahead for required upgrades in 2016. We’re currently in Beta testing with Windows 10 on the Remote Payment Terminals, and we expect that upgrade to be available soon.
For more information about required upgrades, click here.
Date Set forCEO Summit 2016
Bits & Bytes
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UC2016 will be held June 19 – 23, 2016, at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel here in Atlanta, Georgia.
• The registration fee to attend the full conference is $800.00.
• The registration fee to attend two consecutive days is $400.00.
• The registration fee to attend one single day is $250.00.
We will be offering pre-conference workshops on Sunday, June 19. These workshops are available to registered conference attendees only. Each workshop is limited to 30 attendees.
1. ReportIQ Hands-On Training: Leverage Your Data for Maximum Benefit. 4 hours. $300.00
2. Silver level Medallion courses will be offered. 2 hours per course. $100.00 per course.
Our group rate with the hotel is $149.00 per room, plus taxes and fees. Online reservations are now open through the hotel’s dedicated UC2016 booking page.
Welcome to New Customers Who Joined Us in 2015Many of you have neighboring utilities that became a part of the SEDC family in 2015. Please join us in welcoming:
• Carroll Electric Cooperative in Berryville, AR
• Central Virginia Electric Cooperative in Arrington, VA
• Hardwick Electric Department in Hardwick, VT
• Knox Chapman Utility District in Knoxville, TN
• Monroe County EPA in Amory, MS
• Panola-Harrison Electric Cooperative in Marshall, TX
• REA Energy Cooperative in Indiana, PA
In addition, we’d like to welcome the employees of Kiwash Electric Cooperative, which recently merged with Caddo Electric Cooperative, our Member located in Binger, OK. The new cooperative, CKenergy Electric Cooperative, became effective January 1st as Oklahoma’s first consolidated electric cooperative.
Welcome to the family, everyone!
SEDC to Host Member Enrichment Meeting at the NRECA Annual Meeting & TechAdvantage ExpoIf you’re traveling to New Orleans for the Annual Meeting and TechAdvantage Expo, plan to join us for our Member Enrichment Meeting on Sunday morning, February 14, from 10:00 – 11:30 AM. During the meeting, we’ll review 2015 and look at where we’re going in 2016 as we continue providing the quality and innovation you expect of us. Sneak peek: during the meeting we’ll discuss two of your biggest concerns and the solutions that are available to you right now – Advanced Security Database Encryption and our IQ Data Analytics suite.
Advanced Security helps your utility address regulatory compliance requirements by protecting sensitive data on storage media and within the database from unauthorized disclosure through data encryption and strong authentication services to the Oracle database. In short, Advanced
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Jessie Abel Named Vice President of Field Implementations
Security takes the worry out of data security.
The IQ Data Analytics suite offers your utility a range of tools to address your reporting and analytics needs. ReportIQ delivers the most powerful, flexible toolset available in the market today, allowing you to blend data from multiple databases so you can generate meaningful reports. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve collaborated with Futura Systems to merge ReportIQ with their Catalyst web map, bringing you CatalystIQ – an interactive, map-based, mobile-ready reporting breakthrough that will truly change the way you see and use your data. Be sure to join us at the Member Enrichment Meeting for a full live demonstration of CatalystIQ’s capabilities.
If you’re not planning to attend the NRECA Annual Meeting or the TechAdvantage Expo but would like to attend our Member Enrichment Meeting, please do! You do not have to attend the NRECA events to join us.
As It Turns Out, It’s a Pretty Big Deal......to us and to you!We just attended NRECA’s CEO Close-Up, and a particular comment from one of the attendees really made us feel good. They thanked us for sponsoring the conference’s mobile app. That may seem like an odd thing to feel good about, so let us explain.
SEDC has been a Member of NRECA for longer than anyone can remember. Over all those years, we’ve participated in NRECA conferences, and we’ve sponsored meals and breaks and mugs and all sorts of things. We sponsored because we like to support the people that NRECA supports – you. Over all those years, we never heard comments from you about the items we sponsored.
At the end of 2014, we approached NRECA about something they’ve never done before. We proposed a full year sponsorship that covered every mobile app for every conference they hosted, and they accepted. During 2015, we were approached at almost every single conference by people thanking us for sponsoring the mobile app. That thrills us! The #1 reason we participate as a sponsor at any given event is to support you, the attendee at the event. To hear that you find value in the conference app and that you appreciate having the app truly makes us feel good about the sponsorship.
We’ve partnered with NRECA again to sponsor the mobile app for every 2016 conference. The truth is, it’s a pretty cool conference app. We like it so much that we’re working with the developer, DoubleDutch, to produce our own User Conference 2016 mobile app!
So, to the fellow who stopped by during the CEO Close-Up and to all of you who have enjoyed the conference app at an NRECA conference, thank you. We appreciate being able to support you and the events you attend.
Twisted Yet Not TornComanche Electric in Texas was recently featured in Electric Light & Power magazine with an article that showcased Comanche’s efficient storm response. The article outlines how Comanche EC used an enterprise approach with CIS, GIS, OMS and IVR from SEDC and Futura Systems to address thousands of outages caused by a tornado and a massive storm last May. Read the full article here.
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After serving for six years as a Billing Implementation Specialist and as an Implementation Supervisor, Jessie Abel has been promoted to VP of Field Implementations. Jessie steps into the VP position following Chip Hammack, who will be leaving SEDC at the end of January to accept a position at an SEDC Member cooperative.
For those of you who have had the pleasure of working with Jessie, you’ll know that she’s exceedingly knowledgeable, thinks about issues objectively from all viewpoints, and has a knack for explaining things clearly and concisely. She’s already putting these traits into action as she prepares to assume the VP duties.
“Implementations have always followed a certain pattern,” she states, “but we’re going to improve the way we communicate that information to our customers. During the Implementation process, I want our customer to be able to see a roadmap of what their conversion will look like at every step, so they have a clear understanding of what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, why we’re doing it, and what we need from them. We’ll create more consistency and our customers will have a better understanding of the whole process.”
Congratulations to Jessie on her new position. We feel certain that she will continue to build on and improve the strong foundation of the Field Implementation Group.
Territory Managers Welcome a New Team Member to Their RanksOur Territory Managers team has grown by one to start the new year. Beth Essary has joined the Territory Managers from our Billing Product Support group. Before coming to SEDC in 2013, Beth worked at TVA co-ops for many years. Her experience with TVA’s regulations and requirements has made her an excellent choice to serve our members in the TVA region.
Beth is taking over the TVA region in place of Patty Holton, whose region has shifted slightly in response to her own “regional shift.” Patty recently relocated from Georgia to California to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. She will now be serving our California and Arizona members in addition to members in the central US.
For the past several years, our home state of Georgia has been divided up and served by multiple Territory Managers. This year, we will be consolidating the entire state of Georgia with a single TM, Seleta Mason. Seleta joined the Territory Managers team last year after serving for several years in our Field Implementations Group.
To find your TM, visit the Territory Managers page in the Member’s section of our website, where we have each TM’s contact information as well as a map showing each person’s region.
Making the Holidays HappyNovember and December were definitely feel-good months for everyone at SEDC.To start things off, each November SEDC makes an annual contribution to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) in support of the CHOA “Freddie and Friends Luncheon” with Freddie Freeman of the Atlanta Braves. Our contribution allows 10 people to attend the luncheon to hear Freddie and another baseball player talk shop, spin yarns, and dish dirt – all in good fun, of course! For 2015, Freddie was joined by John Smoltz, who is nothing short of legendary here in Atlanta. To help raise
Beth Walser(843) 877-2218
Beth Essary(918) 260-5922
Dalton Black(704) 301-1392
Jason Fortinash(404) 640-6221
Justin Cox(770) 853-8438
Larry Stone(208) 709-0555
Patty Holton(404) 229-3799
Seleta Mason(770) [email protected]
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Contact Your Territory Manager
additional funds for CHOA, we raffled off the luncheon tickets to our employees and ended up raising an additional $700.00!
Then, we auctioned off some company-owned furniture. We hosted the “silent auction” on our intranet, with people commenting to post their bid. Bidding was steady for several days, and then absolutely exploded in the final few minutes. When the dust settled, we had raised another $2,150.00, bringing our company total to $4,850.00 in donations to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta!
When December rolled around, we celebrated the upcoming Christmas holiday with a week of fun activities, good eats, and team building. Throughout that week, we collected non-perishable food items for a local food pantry. Each food item donation earned the donor a spin on a giant prize wheel loaded with a wide range of prizes – from gift cards to hotel getaways to a TV. We also loaded up the prize wheel with goodies from over 30 Member sites as well, everything from shirts and hats to cutting boards, travel mugs, cast iron skillets, portfolios, and more. Thanks to the generosity of so many of our Members, we were able to offer nearly 400 prizes on the wheel. The end result? Nearly 700 pounds of food items for a local food bank and a whole lot of fun for us!
We’re already looking forward to the prize wheel next December, so we’ll go ahead and put this out there: if you’re wondering what to do with those left over Annual Meeting giveaways, look no further! They can become prizes on our prize wheel. It’s a lot of fun for us and a lot of good for the food banks in our community.
RBI’s Energy Bucks Program Has Launched
Is your utility planning to launch the Energy Bucks Program for your consumers? Have you been thinking about it for a few months but haven’t had a chance to get started? We understand. There’s always a lot to do – it’s hard to fit in one more thing. But this is different. This will offer your consumers a way to reduce the amount of their bill simply by shopping online, which most people are already doing!
A small group of utilities have already started offering Energy Bucks to their consumers, and the program roll out has been smooth. Once a utility is enrolled in the program, the amount of effort to maintain the program is minimal – you’ll simply process the energy credit file that RBI sends you, and our Billing Program will handle the rest, ensuring that your consumers see their savings directly on their bill.
Contact [email protected] to learn more about Retail Benefits and the Energy Bucks Program.
