Australian Water Utilities invest in Gentrack Software

14 April 2011: A strategic vendor to water utilities across Australia, Gentrack has continued to take a lead in reforming water industries in Tasmania and Queensland. Reforms have resulted in a renewed level of demand for specialist water billing and CRM software solutions such as Gentrack Velocity.

Gentrack Chief Executive, James Docking is no stranger to changing utility markets and is thrilled to support water utilities facing the challenges of market reform.

“It’s been an exciting start to the year for Gentrack delivering a significant project at Onstream where Gentrack Velocity was selected to bill and manage water retail services for all of Tasmania. Replacing disparate systems from 29 councils, Onstream, a common services business owned by three new stakeholder water corporations, now uses Gentrack Velocity to provide water, waste water and sewerage services to over half a million customers throughout the state.”

Gentrack’s dominance in Australia’s water industry has continued with preparations well under way for the deployment of its software to Allconnex Water in South East Queensland. With over 900,000 customers within its catchment, this project extends Gentrack’s footprint in Australia’s water industry to five states and territories.

“Gentrack software is currently used to bill water based products to customers in most of Australia’s states and territories,” continued Docking, “including the whole of Australia Capital Territory, Northern Territory, and Tasmania. We also have a growing number of water utility customers in Victoria and Queensland where competition for water billing projects is fierce, and like other states in Australia there is real pressure to reduce cost to serve using value based ‘best of breed’ software applications like Gentrack Velocity rather than large generalist ERP applications.”

Rising costs of infrastructure development are also driving utilities to consider new technologies including automated meter reading (AMR) to provide more granular levels of water capacity based data to support the investment process concludes Docking.

“Mapping volume data across a water network using AMR and specialist water meter data management software (MDMS) is essential to enable utilities to analyse demand before re-configuring their network or investing in additional infrastructure to support peak capacity requirements. Leak detection through the analysis of feed point volumes and volumes at the edge of a water network is also critical for water utilities as the costs of water supply and infrastructure continue to rise.”

With offices in Melbourne, Auckland and London, Gentrack takes accountability for the end-to-end delivery, support and development of its specialist products for water utilities, and is positioned to provide an exceptional level of local support. Combined with a passion for the water industry and specialist software for water utilities, Gentrack is poised for further success with its proven billing, CRM and MDM tools designed to support an evolving smart water world.