Hansen is pleased to announce the latest update to Hansen CIS for North American Municipalities and Utilities. The primary focus of this development was to maximize efficiency at every level, with a significant amount of work across various crucial areas delivering a potent set of new capabilities. This latest release cements Hansen CIS as best-in-class in a market where every efficiency gain is cherished, and every dollar invested must prove it delivers genuine value. In this blog, we provide insights into the enhancements now available.
Efficiency Enhancements
First, we will look at the significant efficiency enhancements we’ve delivered in the application front-end, providing valuable benefits such as reducing call times, increasing CSRs’ visibility of and compliance with procedures, decreasing processing times, and improving your overall call handling efficiency. Although possibly a little geeky, there is value in getting into the specifics of several new screens built to handle the most demanding and burdensome everyday use cases:
- The Attached Documents Query screen lets you search through every document uploaded as attachments across the whole system, no matter how they were attached. Now, there’s no longer a need to remember the original screen to which a document was uploaded.
- The new Split Payments screen allows cashiers to apply a single payment across multiple accounts; this facility is available regardless of whether the customer has an account record. The screen even does the math for you to make sure every cent in the payment amount is accounted for before the payments are processed.
- And, to help with the headaches caused when wrongly moving a customer in or out of a premises, the new Undo Move In/Out screen lets users reverse everything back to the point the customer entered – even if that forced another customer out in the process – and Hansen CIS will retain any meter readings obtained during this period of uncertainty.
- Meanwhile, the previous Letters Module underwent a complete overhaul and emerged with a brand-new name: the Communications Module. Many enhancements here happen under the covers, including the robotic process automation mentioned earlier. The underlying communications process now generates XML, a much more flexible starting point, and additional processing can automatically apply formatting and generate formatted PDFs to print or send emails, text messages, or third-party application messages without further manual input. In addition to this streamlined processing, several new screens have been added to the communications module to accommodate customer delivery and privacy settings, we’ve updated the UI to make creating communications more straightforward than ever, and we’ve added a bunch of Jaspersoft studio templates to help you create your communications of your own.
Hansen Self-Service Portal
The next focus area for maximizing your efficiency was self-service. The new Hansen Self-Service Portal is a configurable extension of Hansen CIS, allowing utilities total control over what data is shared with the end customer. As a meta-data-driven application, changes can be made in real-time with zero coding, allowing the utility to configure the look and feel quickly and seamlessly. Also, when customers change their contact information, submit payments, or perform other portal activities, the data is passed directly back to Hansen CIS in real time.
All aspects of the customer’s service journey are combined and managed through a unified customer self-service solution. This innovative approach has numerous advantages beyond merely enhancing the customer engagement experience: empowering customers with a next-generation self-service capability avoids the need for direct contact. This shift has an immediate and tangible impact on the cost-to-serve. Additionally, a pivot in the type of interactions your contact center undertakes, removing much of the mundane “noise”, increases efficiency and focus. Read more about the Hansen Self-Service Portal to dive deeper into the benefits and features.
Staff Efficiency
Now, let’s talk about staff efficiency. One challenge experienced across the customer services industry is that staff churn is an efficiency killer. In response, we’re providing tools to combat the enormous time lost onboarding and training new people to be part of your team. You’ll immediately notice the greatly expanded Online Help site, including comprehensive help files, additional resources, blogs, tips, service desk information, an online suggestion box, and a launchpad for the Hansen Learning Management System (LMS).
The LMS site includes a prebuilt curriculum for your CSRs, made of 12 different interactive courses, to help your novices get up to speed on everything from system navigation to using the brand-new Undo Move In/Out screen, empowering them to get hands-on practice at their own pace. Crucially, Hansen is committed to building out this training library for years to come, ensuring that the user experience keeps improving and – vitally – more efficient.
Software Delivery
Finally, let’s talk about what is evolving at the software delivery level. Hansen CIS development, support, and security teams have been working to transition a typical Hansen CIS implementation and its supporting services and integrated applications to a Cloud-first model. Leveraging this, you can reap the benefits of more frequent updates without the burden of user acceptance testing, security configuration and concerns, and hardware updates.
This model is a more iterative approach to implementation; we’re delivering you the latest and most powerful capabilities, pre-tested and vetted through our Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. Our automated deployment methodology allows more frequent updates, including regular updates for our SaaS customers. You can continue your business with minimal interruption and get the most out of new capabilities quicker and with less fuss.
However, as we all know, the Cloud isn’t for everyone, at least not yet. For some organizations, it’s a matter of control; for others, it might be data sovereignty; for some, it might simply be a need to maximize the return on a tried and tested asset. Hansen recognizes there’s no single implementation profile, and there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach.
With the new release, we’ve created a unique approach for those organizations maintaining on-premises deployments: monthly updates and quarterly upgrades delivered directly to your system. What we like to think of as “Hansen-as-a-Service” offers customers the best of both worlds; they get all the control and deterministic performance they designed and implemented, combined with the agility and dynamic promise of the Cloud. Regardless, Hansen-as-a-Service is too big and important a subject to be limited to just this summary, and we’ll be covering this in more detail in a future post.
These efficiency improvements and the many other enhancements included in our latest release are steps in Hansen’s never-ending quest to improve your CIS experience on every level. From smoothing out the friction points in the background to fine-tuning the user interface to tools that meet every need, as your business evolves and adapts to the time and circumstances, Hansen CIS is right there with you. Change may be inevitable, but who says that’s a bad thing? Hansen is committed to bringing the best changes right to you, and that’s something you can count on.
Greg Pigate
Senior Software Development Manager
Hansen CIS, North America
