TrustPower continues 20 Year partnership with Gentrack

5 December 2011 – Gentrack, a global leader in utility billing and customer management software, announced today the progression of its Gentrack Velocity upgrade project at TrustPower.

A Gentrack customer since 1992, TrustPower has renewed its contract with Gentrack, initiating a project to upgrade its core billing and customer information system to the new Gentrack Velocity platform. A review of alternative systems was completed by TrustPower with Gentrack Velocity providing a stronger business proposition over its ERP competitors according to Gentrack CEO James Docking.

“New Zealand has a competitive and dynamic electricity market with many players and complex market transactions.  It requires a strong level of expertise in order to deliver software to support these market processes and interactions – expertise that is hard to replicate for many of our competitors.  Having worked with TrustPower for over 20 years we’ve established an intimate knowledge of their business strategy and culture. We were able to demonstrate how our software and services will help them to achieve their business goals in the context of competing in the New Zealand electricity market when customer switching is at an all-time high.”

The Gentrack billing system will provide TrustPower with the tools to engage customers in new ways and to streamline its business processes using a new generation of process management capabilities. With phase one on target for completion in early 2012, Docking says that the project will enable TrustPower to drive its business forward and further strengthen its position as one of the sector’s premium service providers.

“Our priority has been to get alongside the TrustPower project team to understand their business drivers before deploying the off-the-shelf billing, customer management and collections components of Gentrack Velocity. The initial phase of the project is ahead of schedule with subsequent phases planned for delivering any new capabilities that TrustPower may require.  This approach greatly reduces the level of project risk enabling TrustPower to maintain its high level of customer service and to ensure billing activities continue to run smoothly.”

TrustPower is one of New Zealand’s largest energy retailers with over 220,000 customers in locations stretching from the far north of the country to the south in Invercargill. The Gentrack Velocity upgrade project follows the completion of a similar project at Meridian Energy in Christchurch who also went to market for a new billing system only to sign for a Gentrack software upgrade shortly thereafter.

Docking concluded, “We are committed to continual development of the Gentrack product using our local technical and business resources. This enables us to deliver a high level of local services and support to our customers such as TrustPower, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy and Vector, while maintaining a strong Auckland based HQ from which we can continue to sell our products on the global stage.”

Gentrack has offices across New Zealand, Australia and the UK to support its growing customer base of energy and water utilities, as well as over 100 airport companies.