Queensland’s Unitywater Implements Gentrack Billing and CRM Software

Gentrack, a leading provider of specialist software for water and energy utilities, announced today the successful deployment of its Velocity billing and customer management software to Unitywater, a new water and sewerage retail business in South East Queensland servicing over 670,000 customers.

A review by Unitywater of the options available to support its billing, customer service and revenue assurance activities resulted in the contract being awarded to Gentrack last year. Following an extensive project including a significant data transformation process, Gentrack has successfully deployed its Velocity software to Unitywater to support the utility’s operation in South East Queensland. This latest contract further cements Gentrack as a key strategic vendor in Australia’s water industry, now billing and managing water and sewerage customers across Victoria, Northern Territory, ACT, Tasmania and Queensland according to Gentrack CEO James Docking.

“It’s been an exciting 18 months for Gentrack with strong demand for our water, sewerage and energy software solutions. The Unitywater project extends our footprint in Australia’s water and sewerage industry to five states and territories, and further supports our position as the premier vendor for water billing and CRM solutions. We’re now engaged with Unitywater to optimise the billing system to ensure they achieve their ‘100% billed’ objective, fulfilling a user pays commitment to their communities”.

Unitywater delivers water, sewerage, recycled water, trade waste and wastewater services to over 280,000 residential and business customers, covering a population of 670,000 within South East Queensland’s Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast catchment. Following a Queensland Water Commission (QWC) review in 2007, the state government initiated core institutional reforms including the establishment of local government owned retailers in July 2010 including Unitywater, Allconnex and Queensland Urban Utilities.

“This project has been an exciting challenge for our project teams given the volume of customer, meter and billing data that was consolidated into Gentrack Velocity from the Councils’ legacy systems” continued Docking.  “Our experience from projects of similar size in Australia has enabled us to work closely with the team at Unitywater to minimise the impact of these challenges and project risks, delivering a specialist solution designed for water, sewerage, and trade waste billing.”

Gentrack recently completed deployment of its water billing and CRM platform to Onstream in Tasmania where similar water market reforms have been initiated. Water services from 29 councils were consolidated into three retail entities, all of which rely on Onstream to provide centralised water billing and collections services for the state using a modern water billing and CRM platform.

“Water has always been a valuable and critical commodity,” Docking concluded, “and water utilities need specialist, flexible systems to support stronger investment decisions, population growth and local market requirements. We welcome Unitywater to our growing community of water, sewerage and energy utility customers across Australia and New Zealand. Unitywater can be assured of our commitment to a long-term partnership as it looks to engage with its customers and shareholders across South East Queensland.”

For more information on Unitywater visit www.unitywater.com