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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA; July 19, 2004 - Victoria's new retail energy supplier, Red Energy, will offer competitive rates backed by super efficient service after implementing the Gentrack CIS billing and information system.

The Gentrack software suite was implemented over a five-month period in time for the company's launch on July 7.

Given the chance to set up a greenfield operation for Red Energy, the Gentrack team invested in its energy industry expertise to implement a solution that covers the complete customer life cycle.
Gentrack’s enhanced Customer Acquisition module automates fully the process of integrating prospect lists from third parties, managing outbound calling lists, generating quotes, scheduling follow up calls and directly interfacing to MSATS (Market Settlement and Transfer Solution) for transfer of customer switching details. With user definable process flows, Red Energy can easily define its prospecting processes and adapt quickly if market conditions or regulatory requirements change.

According to Gentrack's Australian Business Development Manager, Brendan Tipple, the software has enabled Red Energy to reduce electricity costs to consumers by automating many aspects of service. One key feature is the incorporation of customer relationship management (CRM) features into the Gentrack software, which helps make Red Energy's Melbourne call centre so efficient.

The energy company's CEO, Iain Graham, agrees. He says, "With its extended functionality including flexible payment options and focus on automation, Gentrack has allowed us to reduce our cost to serve while enabling extremely high levels of customer service. Both these factors are critical to our success in this highly competitive market."

“The Gentrack team's experience in the Australian market and can-do attitude has also enabled Red Energy to enter the Australian market within the aggressive timescales we set ourselves.”
With no incumbent customer base, Red Energy’s successful market entry depends on its ability to acquire new customers rapidly.

In an open market such as Victoria, where customers are able to choose various service providers, many important customer services are performed through electronic transactions exchanged with multiple third parties.

Gentrack's B2B (business-to-business) data exchange and file manager also offer Red Energy significant resource and time efficiencies. Gentrack can send and receive data in many different formats and automatically validate the source and structure of files as well as automatically processing the data as required, such as kicking off a process on receipt of a file.

For example, in dealing with the Victorian network companies, Red Energy may have to handle up to ten different types of service request per distributor, with multiple files per service request. Gentrack automates the monitoring of incoming and outgoing files, co-ordinates the receipt of files for each service request, validates the file format, translates if necessary and then ensures the appropriate action is taken.

Iain Graham says, "These automated procedures have given Red Energy a significant advantage over many of our competitors who need to use a combination of several software systems and intensive manual procedures for such switching and B2B data exchange. With Gentrack's enhanced prospecting functionality and customer centric architecture, Red Energy has removed the need for such costly CRM systems and the associated additional training time that would have been required."

About Gentrack
GentrackTM CIS is a billing and customer management software suite designed specifically for energy and water utilities and supports multiple products and services. Gentrack is proven in both regulated and competitive markets worldwide, with sites in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Europe, South East Asia and Asia Pacific. GentrackTM is a trading brand of Talgentra Ltd, a global supplier of customer revenue management solutions to the utility, communications, financial and public sectors. www.gentrack.com

About Red Energy
Red Energy is a new electricity retailer in Australia’s deregulated Victorian energy market. Red Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Contact Energy Ltd, one of New Zealand’s largest energy utilities supplying energy to over 620,000 businesses and homes across the country. Red Energy is a stand-alone operation based in Richmond, Melbourne and plans to shake up the local market with no fixed term contracts required for new customers, flexible payment options and prize draws.
www.redenergy.com.au

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