REDWOOD SHORES, CA, August 24, 2009 - The City of Winnipeg's Water and Waste Department, which provides water, wastewater and solid waste services to 180,000 residents, completed its implementation of Oracle® Utilities Customer Care and Billing to improve customer service, expand customer billing options and streamline revenue management. The implementation replaced a 38-year old legacy billing application that was becoming extremely costly to maintain. The city worked with Oracle Consulting on the implementation, which met the city's schedule and budget expectations.

With Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, the Water and Waste Department has near real-time access to customer and billing information. The department also now has the flexibility to introduce new programs and offers - such as e-commerce options - to meet customer expectations for convenience.

Further, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, along with a Pitney Bowes electronic document print solution, has improved customer communication by automating letter creation and improving the customer bill format.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing integrates with a number of third party systems, including the Water and Waste Department's general ledger, meter reading system and payment processing system, resulting in further efficiencies.

In addition, the updated application will help the Water and Waste Department scale to meet projected population growth over the next 25 years.

"The City of Winnipeg had seen severe constraints with our legacy billing application, and we needed a scalable, reliable system to manage our customer service and billing for water and wastewater services. By partnering with Oracle, we were able to quickly and smoothly replace our customer information and billing system with no issues or disruptions to our customers. Now we have the application we need to improve service delivery and offer new programs and flexibility to our customers," said Derek Osborne, project manager, Utility Information Systems, City of Winnipeg.

"Public utilities of all sizes are focused on delivering reliable service and assisting customers with high quality customer care and flexible billing options. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing helps utilities like the City of Winnipeg meet these goals while maximizing revenue, increasing efficiency and minimizing total cost of ownership," Quentin Grady, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities.

About Oracle Utilities
Oracle Utilities delivers the proven software applications that help utilities achieve competitive advantage, business performance excellence and a lower total cost of technology ownership. Oracle Utilities integrates industry-specific customer care and billing, network management, work and asset management, mobile workforce management and meter data management applications with the capabilities of Oracle's industry-leading enterprise applications, business intelligence tools, middleware and database technologies. Oracle Utilities enables its customers to adapt more nimbly to market deregulation, meet ever-evolving customer demands, and deliver on commitments to environmental conservation. For more information, visit www.oracle.com/industries/utilities.

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