Xcel Energy (Xcel) is the fourth-largest combination electricity and natural gas energy company in the United States offering a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.3 million electricity customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers.

As a forward thinking, progressive company, Xcel rewards employees who participate in the ongoing effort to make their company better. To that end, Xcel actively promotes, encourages, and solicits suggestions for improvements across the entire organization. Every suggestion is considered, and employees are awarded points on each suggestion, whether it is adopted or not.

With over 3000 employees participating in the rewards program, Xcel had built several in-house systems to track and monitor awarded points. However, the fulfillment of these awards was mired in a long, slow, and laborious paper process.

It was apparent that a better solution had to be found.

Working in partnership with OC Tanner Recognition Company, we designed and developed a point-based recognition website and database. Points information is uploaded to KMP’s secure production servers on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Each employee is given a username and password granting them access to the awards website. When employees receive points awards they are automatically notified via email. The email directs them to the awards website and, after logging in, they are free to browse a catalogue of selected items including jewelry, household items, electronics, vacations, and other leisure goods. Each item is assigned a point value, and they can redeem their points for anything not exceeding their existing point balance. Once the employee confirms a selection, an order is automatically routed to OC Tanner for fulfillment and delivery.

Xcel’s paper processes for fulfillment of employee awards have been virtually eliminated. Employees can now track their balances, browse the catalogue and redeem awards 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The time interval from award redemption to delivery has dropped from one month to 3 days. The combination of the website and OC Tanner’s superior awards catalogue and fulfillment processes have increased participation in Xcel’s points program. For example, 218 employees submitted 401 suggestions in the month prior to the website’s launch. After launch, this has jumped to 325 participants submitting 971 suggestions. This figure has leveled off to approximately 300 participants monthly with over 7200 suggestions logged for the year.

• Visual Basic 6
• COM as foundation for KMP Business Object Framework (3-tier)
• ASP, HTML
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000