Client background
Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative (BCEC), Inc. is a member-owned, not-for-profit electric utility serving Northeast Texas. With over 38,000 meters of connections across six counties, Bowie-Cass is dedicated to meeting its members' evolving needs by delivering safe and affordable electricity. As a forward-thinking organization, Bowie-Cass continually seeks innovative solutions to enhance service reliability, sustainability, and efficiency of its operations.
The problem:
Limited visibility into contractor activities hindered Bowie-Cass’s efficiency in managing vegetation operations
Before implementing KYRO, Bowie-Cass faced several challenges. Their vegetation management process, which is centered around tracking work done by multiple contractors, lacked the visibility and real-time updates necessary for optimal decision-making. Field crews, responsible for reporting daily work, needed a more structured system to capture and validate work data across scheduled maintenance and emergency tasks. Additionally, BCEC needed insights into contractors’ work locations to ensure that work was done from the designated areas. Plus, estimate insights to compare against the budgets and make proactive adjustments, as needed.
The solution: Digital forms and intuitive dashboards helped Bowie-Cass track work progress, manage payouts, and ensure data accuracy across its operations
Bowie-Cass integrated KYRO to remediate their vegetation management workflows, focusing primarily on two powerful features: forms and dashboards.
BCEC uses KYRO's crew location reports, where contractors submit daily activity and specific locations of vegetation treated, leveraging their mobile devices right from where they are. This gives BCEC real-time insights into crew placement and progress.
One of their primarily used forms is the ‘Vegetation Management (VM) work report’ that is used to log essential data such as hours worked, equipment used, and materials (like herbicide volumes). The recorded data directly supports BCEC’s billing validation process, improving accuracy in financial tracking.
KYRO’s interactive dashboards provide Bowie-Cass with a real-time overview of all work performed and simplified decision-making with quick data interpretation.
Map-view dashboard showcases work locations
Using geo-tagged data, Bowie-Cass can visualize the exact locations where vegetation management tasks are completed, ensuring that work is performed in the correct areas. This capability helps Bowie-Cass prevent costly mistakes, such as paying for work done far from the designated electrical lines.
Financial dashboard helps in payout calculations
The financial dashboard allows Bowie-Cass’s team to monitor contractor performance, track materials used and assess the overall efficiency of their vegetation management efforts. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of estimated payouts based on contractor reports. These estimates help BCEC align invoicing with budget expectations, reducing discrepancies and supporting timely payouts to contractors.
Key results
Since implementing KYRO, Bowie-Cass has experienced significant improvements in both operational efficiency and financial management. The digital forms and dashboards have helped:
Outcome: Digital forms and dashboards improved visibility into contractor activities and payout decisions
By leveraging KYRO’s forms and dashboards, Bowie-Cass has made its vegetation management process more efficient with better financial oversight. KYRO’s ability to provide real-time insights into work done and locations, makes it an invaluable tool for companies like Bowie-Cass that are committed to high standards of vegetation management while maintaining a clearer, more organized view of their operations.
