At a utility company, trust is everything.
For most of our customers, the bill is the main interaction they have with us. It’s not just a statement, it’s a snapshot of their usage, their habits, and their relationship with our company. If that bill isn’t clear, accurate, and timely, it creates confusion and erodes trust very quickly.
At NW Natural, we’ve been serving our communities for more than 125 years. We provide natural gas to over 800,000 customers across Oregon and southwest Washington, and reliability has always been at the core of what we do. But as expectations changed and our systems grew more complex, we knew our legacy approach to billing and document management wasn’t sustainable.
When legacy systems start holding you back
Before we modernized, a lot of our billing and document processes were homegrown. They worked—but they were clunky, labor-intensive, and required constant oversight.
Billing jobs would start late at night and run into the early morning hours. Someone had to monitor the process the entire time. We also didn’t have a good way to retain or retrieve historical billing data. So, when a customer called with a question, our agents couldn’t see the exact bill the customer was looking at. That made it harder to resolve issues calmly and efficiently.
At the same time, our IT environment was growing fast. We were adopting more SAP applications, acquiring water utilities, and strengthening cybersecurity to meet SecOps and TSA requirements. As a utility, we can’t just adopt bleeding-edge technology overnight.
We needed something proven, something reliable that we could grow into. And as the person managing these systems as essentially a department of one, I needed solutions that reduced complexity, not added to it.
Reimagining how we communicate with customers
Our turning point came with a project we called “Composition 2.0.” The goal wasn’t just to automate bills but to modernize how we communicate with customers. By implementing OpenText Document Presentment for SAP Solutions, we were able to generate millions of highly personalized bills, letters, and notices each year that are clearer and easier to understand.
What stood out to me early on was how dynamic the solution is. We didn’t have to push every calculation or layout decision into our source systems. OpenText could handle composition logic and formatting, which gave us more flexibility and control over how information appears on the bill.
That mattered because people don’t just want to see a dollar amount. They want to understand why their bill looks the way it does.
Giving agents and customers the same view
Another big shift was visibility. Today, documents generated through SAP are archived in OpenText Content Management and surfaced back into our customer information system through APIs. When a customer calls, our agents can click a link and see the exact bill the customer is viewing.
That sounds simple, but the impact is huge. When agents aren’t flying blind, conversations are calmer, clearer, and more productive. Issues get resolved faster. Escalations go down. And trust goes up. When technology makes it easier for our agents, the entire customer experience improves.
Building reliability into the platform
As a utility, availability and resilience are non-negotiable. We re-architected our OpenText Archive Center for SAP Solutions using a shared failover cluster across two locations so documents remain accessible even during maintenance or outages. That reliability extends into the field as well.
Through integration with SAP and Clevest Solutions, our field technicians now use tablets to access blueprints and schematics directly from OpenText. Paper forms are largely gone, which improves safety, efficiency, and decision-making on job sites.
Throughout this journey, OpenText Professional Services played an important role. Having access to deep documentation, expertise, and responsive support made a real difference, especially when you’re managing a broad OpenText footprint with a small team.
“I can reach out, get answers quickly, and keep things moving. That’s what I expect from a partner.”
The results we see every day
The results of this transformation are very real for us:
- Our billing process now takes about half the time it used to
- Bills are clearer and more accurate, which helps reduce disputes
- Customer service teams resolve issues faster and with more confidence
- Digital bills are easier to understand, encouraging paperless adoption
And for me personally, it’s made the environment manageable. Without OpenText, these processes would require more people and a lot more time. Instead, they run in the background.
Looking ahead
Right now, our focus is on stabilizing and securing the environment—making sure we’re agile when it comes to upgrades, patches, and cybersecurity. We’re also starting to think about what’s next, including expanded use of Content Server and AI-driven knowledge discovery, especially for field engineers.
What matters most to me is that we’ve built a foundation we can trust. We can evolve. We can add capabilities. And we can do it without compromising the reliability our customers have counted on for generations.
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