NEWS 2000: Nov02 DST Innovis Wins Large North American Utility Customer

RANCHO CORDOVA, CA., November 2, 1999 — DST Innovis, formerly CableData Inc. and Custima International plc, announced today that it has successfully implemented CUSTIMA™ Billing and Customer Information System (CIS) for the City of Tulsa’s Public Works Division, representing the first, large utility organization in North America to operate the system. The implementation of the CUSTIMA CIS system provides Tulsa’s 185,000 customers with proven high quality customer care service levels.

“Public Works and DST Innovis worked closely together as a team to ensure that the implementation was seamless to our customers,” said Mike Buchert, assistant public works director for the City of Tulsa. “Installing a new system is not an easy endeavor. However, we used a collaborative effort to implement a fully scaleable, customer service system and have achieved great success.”

“We are very excited that our entrance into the large utility industry in North America was so successful for Tulsa Public Works and its customers. This implementation marks our strong focus on moving the CUSTIMA system into the domestic market,” said Bob McKenzie, vice president of strategic marketing for DST Innovis. “Tulsa is a case study on how DST Innovis achieves successful, open and proven customer service solutions throughout the life of a project.”

The CUSTIMA CIS system in use at Tulsa includes interfaces to meter reading, general ledger, point of sale, automated clearing house, bill print, accounts payable and lockbox systems. The system runs on Digital Alpha hardware and utilizes an ORACLE database. A second phase of the project will include implementation of CUSTIMA CyberCSR®. “With the CIS implementation complete, we can now move into Phase II of the project, adding the enhancements of Internet access and interactive voice response,” Buchert said.

The City of Tulsa’s Division of Public Works
The City of Tulsa DPW provides water, waste water and refuse services to the City of Tulsa (population 381,393) and surrounding areas.

CUSTIMA
Custima is a highly functional, open and fully scaleable system implemented at 55 sites on four continents, in fifteen countries and is currently used to issue more than 25 million bills every year.

DST Innovis
DST Innovis is a leading provider of customer care and open billing systems to the global communications and utilities industries. Clients include providers of video services, wireless and wireline telephony, direct broadcast satellite, electricity, water, gas, waste management, utility and multiple services in more than 30 countries. For three decades, DST Innovis has connected people through technology with its solutions — installed, proven and in operation worldwide. DST Innovis’ systems address the full range of companies by size and needs from small-scale, single-service applications to industry-wide, multi-service operations.

The company also offers a complete range of complementary professional services, including consulting, custom application development and client training. DST Innovis is dedicated to helping its customers increase revenues, reduce operating expenses and improve their levels of customer care.