Npower, the retail arm of the UK's
largest electricity supplier, RWE npower, is consolidating the
details of its six million residential customers onto a single
database.
The company, which was formed in 2000 through a merger of
several utility companies, recently completed the migration of six
million customer accounts to a single
billing and accounting system.
In recent weeks, however, customers have been unable to resolve
account queries. Call centre operators said they were unable to
access the database from the main billing system because
connectivity was "continually going up and down".
An npower spokesman said, "As with any large migration there
have been some issues. However we are addressing these and we are
confident that the end result will allow us to provide a better
service for our customers."
Npower
has consolidated its customers into the bespoke dual-fuel system
used by Northern Electric, which merged with Npower in 2000.
The company chose this as the main billing system because it was
a fully featured program that required little development to
support npower's customers.
The energy company said moving the customer information to a
single database was expected to enable it to provide consistent
customer services and help speed up the development of new
products.
Longer term benefits will include reduced training times and the
ability to further optimise business processes easily by having all
the customer data in one place.