Gentrack launches new CRM software to support Smart Grid technologies

Gentrack announced today its new Gentrack Velocity CRM application to support smart grid technologies. 

Recent domestic and international press regarding the role of demand side participation in electricity smart grids is driving new investment in technologies to improve customer engagement models, and in particular to help utilities to better understand customer behaviours, according to Gentrack CEO James Docking.

“Smart grid and demand response challenges are being tackled by utilities worldwide including many of our customers.  The key challenge is to ensure that all stakeholders are actively engaged in the deployment and returns are acceptable for all parties including consumers where the ultimate benefit lies – opportunities for lower electricity prices. We’re excited to launch this new CRM product at a time when it‘s essential for utilities to find new ways to engage with customers around demand response initiatives. Without this engagement the wider benefits of smart metering technologies will be lost.”

Recently awarded a contract to supply its billing software to demand response (DR) aggregator Energy Response, Gentrack has turned attention to its CRM platform, launching a set of enhanced business process engines, data explorer tools and webservices capabilities to support demand response and customer management strategies.

“We have the smart data management capabilities and billing engine to enable utilities to process and bill large volumes of interval data from smart metering.” says Docking. “The logical extension of this R&D investment was to give utilities a set of intuitive customer facing tools and capabilities including a new Data Explorer for analysing customer, account and consumption data.  We have also invested heavily in continued development of webservices, now exposing over 6500 services to support ‘real-time’ integration with web-portals and other smart visualisation technologies used by customers.”

Gentrack is experiencing significant demand for its products in New Zealand, the UK and Australia as vendor agility, value and ability to deliver flexible software solutions rank highly in a utility’s decision making processes.

“Gentrack is positioned as a value based software developer against our much larger competitors,” continued Docking. “We endeavour to make the most of every opportunity available to prove that our smart products and our smart people are the difference between projects that succeed and projects that fail. Our 100% project success rate is proof enough of our ability to deliver.”