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CONTACT INFORMATION
Gentrack
www.gentrack.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dual Billing Capability to Give Origin
Energy an Edge in Deregulation
Origin Energy has chosen Gentrack
CIS to enable the utility to manage all its complex billed contestable
gas and electricity customers on a single system. As a result, Origin
expects to make substantial cost savings, improve efficiency and attract
new business
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, January 28 2003 - Origin Energy, one
of Australia’s largest energy utilities, has successfully implemented
the Gentrack CIS billing and customer management software
system. Gentrack CIS is now being used to bill electricity
and gas consumption for all Origin’s time interval-billed commercial
and industrial (C+I) customers as well as some basic metered C+I
customers.
Origin serves over 2 million residential, commercial and industrial
customers across Australia. Following the introduction of contestability
in the national energy market and a number of acquisitions, Origin
need a single system with the performance to bill accurately for
complex electricity and gas usage, and the flexibility to adapt
to customers’ changing energy needs in an evolving, competitive
market.
According to the utility's Full Retail Contestability Project Manager,
Dennis Barns, a large customers electric meter alone may be read
up to 17,000 times a year. Tariffs applied to those 17,000
readings result in an extremely complex bill. But as energy
is such a significant portion of C+I customers' expenditure, they
need to easily track and manager their consumption. Origin wanted
to provide accurate, timely, power usage reports and graphics electrically
with the future option for real time Internet-based analysis.
Before migrating its large customers to Gentrack, the utility had
them spread across four systems. With the one integrated Gentrack
billing and customer care system, Origin Energy now expects substantive
economies of scale from being able to bill multiple fuels on a single
system.
“The existing situation posed significant cash management problems,”
added Barnes. “So we decided to move to a single system, choosing
Gentrack over alternative solutions for its speed of processing
and flexibility to deal with complex customer requirements. Gentrack
was clearly head and shoulders above its competitors.”
He believes Origin is benefiting from the experience gained by
the Gentrack team in the deregulation of New Zealand’s energy industry.
“Deregulation is progressing quickly in Australia, but has already
been in effect in New Zealand for some years now,” he says. “With
Gentrack as the dominant provider of billing software in New Zealand,
deregulation know-how gained there has been transferred to the system
and we will benefit from implementing that functionality.”
The Gentrack CIS suite’s adaptability has allowed New Zealand-based
retailers to configure the billing and customer care solution to
their specific requirements, offering service differentiation in
that highly competitive market. In Australia, Origin has been working
with the Melbourne-based Gentrack team and SMS Consulting, tailoring
Gentrack CIS to the utility’s market and business needs.
With Gentrack CIS being independently benchmarked recently
to 3 million consumers, the scalability and modularity of the software
suite will give Origin a future-proof solution to manage further
market change and customer service challenges.
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