A new year is upon us and with it comes new opportunities and challenges. As a company, we have achieved a great deal in 2010 and we certainly plan to carry this success into 2011.
A Look at 2010
Over the past year, we have successfully provided:
- Best-in-class Support Services organization, including:
- Improving the timeliness of our Support Services by:
- Reducing the average age of cases in backlog to 1.3 days
- Increasing our percentage of cases closed in 1 business day to 63%
- Improving your access to Support by:
- Permanently extending our normal business hours from 7am to 7pm
- Providing you access to emergency, after-hours Support via ESC’s primary business number as opposed to a separate, unpublished phone number
- Using a call center to ensure that all after-hours calls are routed to an available Support Agent as quickly as possible and to avoid having calls go to voice mail in the event that an agent is busy
- Tools to improve your productivity by:
- Publishing over 1,000 Solutions in the Customer Access Portal (CAP) in order to provide you with on-demand access to knowledge that allows you to find answers to questions and solutions to issues that have been submitted to Support by other users
- Providing you with on-demand access to your software license keys via the Upgrade Request tab in CAP
- Improved communications by:
- Reformatting our case resolution emails to clearly indicate what actions were taken by ESC and potentially what actions still need to be taken by the user to resolve the case
- The industry’s first efficient and effective means of aggregating, parsing, reporting and presenting composite data for a fleet of stack CEMS DAS
- An easily implemented, focused solution to the electric power generation industry’s GHG Reporting Program requirements which allows you to significantly reduce the amount of effort you invest in documenting your CEMS and your non-CEMS data. Many of our clients have stated that they are implementing this software with a view of it as the foundation for the larger regulatory program to come.
- An alternative hosting scenario for your CEMS DAS hardware and software, providing a much needed service to several of our clients who do not want to include “IT management of compliance monitoring systems” as an internal component of their business focus.
Goals for 2011
One of my primary goals for the company in 2011 is for us to earn your praise for more effectively communicating with you, our users. This will be a natural extension of our commitment to listening to you, to include the more complete act of communicating with you. To get us “jump-started” in this effort, Ray McCreight, on behalf of the User Group Steering Committee, visited our Austin office in December for a very valuable brainstorming session which focused on ways that ESC could communicate more effectively with our users on all levels. Specifically included in these discussions was a focus on creating better exchanges with our users concerning future plans. We will be working diligently this year to be better communicators as well as listeners.
In addition to our commitment to communicate more effectively, other plans for 2011 include:
Continued investment in ESC|StackVision 3.n series, ESC|FleetVision 2.n series software and the 88XX series Data Controller as the workhorses in the industry for addressing 40CFR75 and 40CFR60 as well as other state and local permit requirements for stack Continuous Emissions Monitoring and reporting. One focus in 2011 will be on strengthening StackVision’s capabilities with regard to Part 60 and other state and local permit reporting. The StackVision/FleetVision/88XX Data Controller combination will continue as ESC’s locally installed CEMS DAS offering with licensed ownership and an accompanying maintenance contract. In addition, a remotely hosted option will continue to be offered for those facilities that wish to take advantage of the benefits of this type of offering.
Incorporation of new EPA GHG Reporting Program subpart reporting requirements as they apply to the electric power generation industry. Many of our clients are uncovering unexpected reporting needs as they roll up their reports to the corporate level.
Please take advantage of the many avenues that we will be providing to discuss these plans in more detail as we solicit and value your input.
Austin Update
Many of you have voiced questions about our Austin office. We currently have approximately 25 employees in Austin and have successfully moved into our permanent office space. Until the beginning of December, we had been operating out of office suites which were configured for short-term, temporary rentals, but we now occupy a larger office complex which has several other software companies as tenants. Therefore, we are currently on track with our plan to have the Business Development and Product Development portions of our company situated in Austin by the first of 2011. The Engineering, Regulatory Services and Support Services groups, of course, remain in Knoxville as per the original plan.
As always, let me know how we are doing!