By end of 2008, it's expected that 16 lakh new meters will be installed across northern and central California, and within the next three years, PG&E wants to have the SmartMeter program up and running in nearly 60 lakh homes and businesses.

But as they provide customers with real-time insight into energy consumption, saving customers cash and the hassle of having to call PG&E to report outages seems like a no-brainer. Lawicki says that launching customer-focused initiatives (including a service that allows building developers to apply for new gas or electric service connections online) wasn't as simple as flicking a switch; it called for a complete overhaul of the company's IT organization in order to enable it to function as a single, centralized entity.

The first step was creating a Solution Delivery Center dedicated to the consistent delivery of IT solutions. This group of employees, including IT staff, the VP of marketing and subject matter experts from other lines of business, focuses on the skills needed to provide services and solutions to PG&E's business partners and customers. Prior to introducing the Solution Delivery Center, Lawicki says IT-related processes, such as providing Web-based customer support, depended on whichever PG&E department a customer was dealing with. By replacing a hodgepodge of departmental styles, approaches and systems with a body that ensures consistent, enterprisewide IT processes, PG&E cleared the way for undertakings such as the SmartMeter project.

The creation -- and re-examination -- of IT roles also readied PG&E for other customer-centric endeavors. A newly fashioned chief customer officer, responsible for all aspects of customer service at PG&E, works with the IT department to design customer-focused strategies and develop products around customers' needs. Even Lawicki had to step back and assess the part she was to play in the company's new approach to customer satisfaction. Upon careful consideration, she began to see her role at PG&E as 'transformational' and, drawing on her years of weathering mergers and acquisitions, started to analyze "the large amount of technology investment that was required" to revamp PG&E's approach -- and her own -- to her customer's satisfaction.

To Serve the Customer, Engage the Customer

Leonard Peters, associate dean and CIO at Columbia Business School in New York, knew it was time to replace his school's "antiquated and clunky" course management system when he began to receive "a ton" of complaints from faculty and students.

So, in fall 2005, he began evaluating a number of vendors. After an in-depth review of courseware products, he chose Angel Learning. Deployed at the beginning of the summer 2007 semester, the Web-based e-learning solution lets students track upcoming and overdue assignments, send and receive e-mail, schedule events, check grades (if used by faculty), participate in discussion groups and create teams for project work. It also allows faculty to administer pre-course work more easily and communicate requirements for multiple courses from a single, Web-based application.

But the intense competition among business schools for students and faculty meant Peters couldn't take any chances on the system's design and functionality. In addition to working with Angel Learning to customize it, in 2005 Peters partnered with both faculty and students in order to create a baseline of requirements. He cobbled together a group enrolled in the school's New Product Development course to determine what the system's key attributes should be. He then used a video-grapher to record faculty members and staff sharing their thoughts on the antiquated system's shortcomings and their expectations for the new solution.