63 A COOPERATIVE SPIRIT CHAPTER THREE “They could say, ‘We know this is what [the software] does now, but we need it to do this.’” Just before Nester-Peavy retired in 2003, a prototype of the new iVUE software was ready for her and other NISC staff to share with Members so that they could try it out. Reactions varied widely. Some were uncomfortable with change. Others wantedit“asfastasyoucouldgiveittothem,”Nester-Peavysays. The Board pushed Dosch and the NISC staff to make the new software ready as quickly as possible. The lull of a rewrite can be deadly to a tech company. But “cooperation among cooperatives” is one of the core cooperative principles, so the Members were patient. “A first-class product — that’s what we were more concerned about than anything else,” says Delbert Smith, retired General Manager of Lamb County Electric Cooperative in Littlefield, Texas, and first Chairman of the NISC Board. November 2003. The time had come. NISC employees had practically been living at Central Indiana Power (now called NineStar Connect) in Greenfield, Indiana, which would be the first Member to move from CAPS to iVUE, NISC’s new software. So many details needed attention — cleaning up the data, practicing with the new screens, learning about new features, making sure all the co-op’s rates were included in the software. Customer service reps ran the bill calculations on the current system and then repeated it on iVUE, to make sure data was accurate and in sync. If they ran into a glitch, NISC programmers went to work on a fix. Central Indiana knew they were shaping not only (Above) iVUE’s screen design today features a sleek look. (Below) Members test drive iVUE at the 2003 MIC, before its initial release at Central Indiana Power, now NineStar Connect.