Saving Time, Reducing Errors, and Enhancing Employee Empowerment for Muscatine Power and Water

About Muscatine Power and Water

Muscatine Power and Water (MPW) is the largest municipal electric utility in Iowa, providing internet, TV, phone, and water services, in addition to electric service to residents in and around Muscatine and Fruitland.

Industry: Utilities

Product: Journyx project time management integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Partner: Cogsdale, which specializes in providing enterprise-level information and operations solutions for utilities like MPW, as well as local governments and other entities

Problem:

MPW implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP as a financial tool in 2018 but were still filling out “old-school” timesheets in 2021, when the utility started looking for a more automated solution for timekeeping. At the time, though they had tried to standardize on an Excel spreadsheet, there were still 17 different versions of that spreadsheet throughout the organization! In addition, 8-10 administrators were hand-keying the time and projects from these spreadsheets into GP. Not only was this effort time-consuming for those admins, but there were far too many errors. And, while management wanted to push for more employee accountability, the process was error-prone.

In addition, since many employees are in the field at any given time, the ability to log in from anywhere was a key requirement. The system needed to track some complexities for the utility as well, including time spent on specific work orders and tasks while serving up a simple, intuitive interface for all levels of the organization to use to log their time.

Solution:

After looking at other solutions on the market, Muscatine Power and Water chose Journyx project time tracking software, integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Results:

Carolyn Verwers, Accountant I at MPW, stated, “By implementing Journyx project management, we’ve saved an estimated 79 hours per pay period – basically the same as one full-time employee!”

Since MPW performs the majority of its own maintenance at the utility’s power plant, Journyx JX helps them track how long a fix might take, along with the employee hours involved. This visibility helps management with resource planning.

Because the interface is simple, intuitive, and looks like a spreadsheet, adoption has been wholeheartedly accepted by the organization and is being used by all employees, from the General Manager level down to those who are not known for being tech-savvy. For salaried employees, the smart timesheets that auto-populate are a real time-saver. And employees in the field can input their time via a web browser or the mobile application.

Verification rules help prevent employees from making errors, and admins are now free to focus on more valuable tasks. Before Journyx implementation, nothing could be input into GP for approximately three days after the end of a pay period until new timesheets were created for the next pay period, all the while data was accumulating. Now, there’s no downtime, and employees are free to input their timesheet entries at any time.

Journyx implementation has led to more employee empowerment, less tedium, and relatively error-free submissions.

Carolyn and the MPW team are excited to consider rolling out other features within the organization such as leave entry and using Journyx data in PowerBI to create additional insights and value to the organization.