South East Water has taken the plunge and is buying in the services
of an ASP, Helen Beckett takes a look
The prospect of reducing costs and developing new merchandising
opportunities were compelling reasons for South East Water to
outsource its billing systems onto the Web. SE Water has
traditionally communicated with customers using paper and
telephone, which are expensive channels. Every bill that is not
paid by direct debit costs the minimum of the price of a stamp,
plus the price of fulfilment. And for those customers who wait
until the final reminder before stumping up, this cost is
duplicated.
Added to this overhead are the added costs and complexities of
managing these channels. More than 70% of SE Water's customers are
billed on the rateable value of their house and as a result they
get their bills in February and March. The utility's customer
enquiries peak around that time and despite careful planning, call
volumes cannot be anticipated accurately.
"Logically, if we send a letter it should arrive the following day,
but even if we try to stagger the bills, we still get
unaccounted-for peaks," says Steve Buck, director of commercial
services at SE Water. While it's hard to isolate billing costs,
Buck says that customer service operations costs millions every
year.
A few quick calculations showed that the utility could make a 90%
saving on all billing and payments transacted over the Internet.
SE Water decided to buy the services on an ASP basis from iDesk,
chiefly because it could be implemented straight away. By contrast,
the other companies approached by SE Water - including a major
financial institution - all had a concept that they wanted to
develop with the utility. The current time frame for implementation
is an extensive pilot during the summer followed by roll-out in
September.
Outsourcing the entire project to iDesk made sense in terms of
time-to-market and also the available pool of experienced Internet
personnel on the market. "We would have had to recruit good-quality
staff and that's easier said than done," points out Buck. Given
that SE Water is based at Haywards Heath, it would also have meant
paying London salaries. The contract represents a sure way of
cutting back on continuing capital investment.
iDesk hosts every aspect of the billing process on its servers.
This includes bill presentment and payment, direct debits and
enquiries. The latter are routed through to the correct outlet in
SE Water.
"We've just been through a look and feel sessions and we're keen to
communicate our vigilance to customers. Part of our brand is that
we look after our customers," concludes Buck.
Water tight: Security
IDesk's billing system is built
on an Oracle Database and Sun Solaris 2.7 running Solant software.
Apple Web Objects was used for development and the South East Water
customer information system only required minor
customisation.
Specifying and validating security to ensure that Web-based
customer data is secure was crucial. "The ASP model used for the
project brings additional issues with security over and above our
internal IT infrastructure," explains IT director Mark Foulsham.
"Before progressing in any depth with iDesk we had to assess both
its physical security [hosted by Exodus] and virtual security [a
Checkpoint firewall]. We are reviewing and addressing security on
an ongoing basis even in this pre-pilot stage."
Bass turns to ASPs
Barbox was conceived by Bass Brewers
as a way of automating ordering and was launched last July as a
licence trade portal. The hub, which was developed by Isis
software, automates such tasks as ordering and stocktaking. It also
hosts applications for designing pub quizzes and ordering
entertainment acts.
An early user is Rochdale Transport Club where, for steward Neil
Gretton, perhaps one of the surprises has been ease-of-use. "I'm
coming up to retirement, and for me technology was a big deal," he
says. From this starting point, Gretton now uses Barbox to organise
his week.
The advantages are to do with convenience and speed. Gretton uses
technology for nearly everything and finds the ASP provides
granular financial information that makes a big difference to how
he manages the business.