Boulder, CO – InfoPrint Solutions Company, a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh, today announced it has been chosen to provide the next-generation customer communications infrastructure for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). LADWP is the nation's largest municipal utility, delivering water and electricity supplies to more than four million users in homes and businesses throughout the City of Los Angeles.
 
This state-of-the-art technology will enable LADWP to lower operational costs while increasing customer participation in energy and water savings initiatives via customized messaging and imagery dynamically printed on must-read communications, such as bills and statements.
 
The new bill design will have the capability of featuring vivid color graphs to show individual power consumption per home or business, allowing customers to clearly see the simple ways they can improve or change their energy usage.  In addition, with this technology LADWP will be able to enable greater customer understanding by clearly distinguishing power and water usage from sewage and sanitation details, potentially reducing call center volume. As a result, LADWP will have the ability to keep customers informed on what's most important to them: saving water, power and money, ultimately encouraging conservation and helping to reduce emissions.
 
"We are thrilled to be working with a forward-looking body such as LADWP on this important initiative, which comprises products across the entire InfoPrint and partner portfolio," said Enrico Parodi, Vice President, Worldwide Software and Services at InfoPrint. "Through working with our teams to identify the optimal set of technologies and best practices, LADWP is providing its customers with the education they need to focus on environmental issues, as well as realizing cost savings through infrastructure updates and installation of next-generation equipment."
 
LADWP will build its new communication system with an Automated Document Factory (ADF) driven by the InfoPrint ProcessDirector (IPPD) workflow platform. IPPD will help LADWP enhance productivity, while minimizing errors and lowering costs with extensive printer and inserter management capabilities - vital considerations when producing millions of statements annually. The LADWP ADF will maximize postal discounts provided by the new US Postal Service (USPS) Intelligent Mail system, which allows for further savings through more efficient mail preparation. Through more efficient mail prep and dist LADWP will also be able to redirect statements of customers who have moved before the close of a billing period, enabling the Department to send the bill to the new address. This will minimize the costly distribution of statements to incorrect addresses, along with the associated customer service follow-ups.
 
InfoPrint's ADF is an open and scalable platform, which will allow LADWP continued flexibility to respond to their customer needs in the future, including encouraging e-delivery. A recent IDC survey found that 68 percent of respondents receive their ADF solutions from InfoPrint.*
 
InfoPrint's Precision Marketing Service Practice is coordinating focus groups, surveys and data analytics to support the new business rule – driven communications structure. The new statements will be produced in color on high quality, energy efficient InfoPrint 5000 inkjet printers.
 
LADWP was established in 1902 to deliver water to the City of Los Angeles. Electric distribution began in 1916. The Department serves four million residents, with approximately 1.4 million electric service connections and 712,992 water service connections.