Access Wellington : A Utility Payment Management App
1) Making Wellington Village Appy
2) Executive Summary
3) Access Wellington
4) Problem Challenge
5) Discussion
6) Solution
7) Conclusion
8) Screenshots
This case study introduces a very novel approach for the utilities payment system for the water and sewage facility. This case study highlights a fully equipped utility payment app "Access Wellington" in every house, which is fully programmed and capable of managing and viewing your consumed units of water usage and sewer.
Mobile technologies impact every aspect of our daily lives. The technologies and its developments are bringing-in new discoveries which were thought as dreams a few decades ago. The nature of human being forces him to extend his capabilities, his realities to unveil new horizons of life. This case study highlights a new methodology for the utilities payment system. A fully equipped water utility payment app “Access Wellington” in every house, which is fully programmed and capable of managing and viewing your water usage.
Wellington is a village in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. As of 2014, the village has a population of 61,000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it the most populous village in the state. Wellington is part of the South Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
You can check the due amount referring to your previous bills and your history of water consumption. The Consumption Report feature provides colourful graphs to compare historical water use by billing period for the last few years. You also have the ability to make credit card payments using this application.
Access Wellington mobile app provides 61,000 people of Wellington, Florida, tools to :
The Consumption Alert feature offers customers the ability to set a daily and monthly consumption limit. You can set an amount that represents normal water use for your account. If your daily consumption exceeds the daily limit or your monthly trend projects to exceed your monthly limit, an automated alert will be sent via your notification preference (i.e., in-app, text, email, or phone call).The consumption alert feature also includes a leak notification option that is sent when there is a continuous flow of water over an unusual period of time.
Wellington Government approached Logicnext to develop a mobile app to manage their water usage and bills. When they approached they already had an online portal where the citizens could pay their utility bills. But they knew that was not enough. Owing to the increase in mobile use, it was only the best and easiest way to reach their citizens without breaking the bank.
The Wellington government faced two problems.
Ideally we love making things from scratch, but that is not always a viable approach given the fact that VOW has an online [web based] utility payment management system which allows their citizens to pay and mange their utility bills online. They wanted the same functionalities on mobile but didn’t know how to do it. They didn’t have the expertise to handle this issue in an efficient manner; moreover the budget was also a stumbling block to take any sort of experimental risks.
In short everything was going great in terms of going online but when it came to ease to reach its citizens any-time or anywhere [possible only via mobile], it lacked the touch, the touch of going mobile. So Logicnext analysed the problem thoroughly and proposed a solution with a blueprint for the mentioned app Access Wellington. The blue print included the design, architecture and wire framework for the app. After 6 iterations we finally showed two of them, out of which the client selected one of them.
The solution was simple and yet effective considering the fact that the Wellington Government already had a web UPS “Utility Payment System”. All we had to do was integrate it with our own Mobile API which can be used to integrate with virtually any platform so that it can be used across platform like Android, iOS, Blackberry OS 10 etc.
Once the API was integrated with UPS, Our mobility Engineers Started the process of app development. Access Wellington is now available for download in iOS and Android.
Finally we developed Access Wellington which is designed to help you do business with the Village of Wellington. Version 1 will help you view and manage your water bills. Account holders can view account history, current and past bill information, consumption history and payment history. Users can change their contact information (phone and email); change the security PIN, directly contact customer service, and much more. It has the ability to make on demand payments, set-up auto pay, and sign up for electronic billing. It will also expand services to Building Permits.
