RETAIL , BIL L ING A ND CRM | Sponsored editorial
A NEW BILLING SYSTEM FOR
AUSTRALIAN WATER UTILITIES Aptumo, a cloud-based water customer billing solution powered by Echo Managed Services in the UK, is making positive in-roads into the Australian water sector. Coliban Water has successfully transitioned its billing and customer support software to Aptumo, and now North East Water has also chosen Aptumo to support its team in delivering an enhanced experience for its 55,000 customers across 39 towns in the area.
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n response, Aptumo has established an Australian company based in Melbourne to attend to the existing requirements of Coliban Water and North East Water, and to service the needs of future Australian water utility clients. Aptumo has made two significant appointments to its new Australian operations: Tony Kelly AM as a non-executive Director, and Richard Harris as General Manager. Both are well respected, experienced members of the Australian water sector. “Our team on the ground in Australia allows us to provide local context to create successful billing solutions for the Australian water sector. This is complimented by the global expertise of the 120-strong team from Echo Managed Services,” Mr Kelly said. “Richard and I are water people; we understand the meter-to-cash process. The creation of a local Aptumo office cements our commitment to assist Australian water utilities and their customers for the long haul.”
IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY WHILE LOWERING COSTS Aptumo, whose pioneering billing software is built on the Salesforce platform, is building the foundations for further expansion in the Australian market. The mission is to help more water companies transform their customer and stakeholder experiences, while lowering their billing costs. The company behind Aptumo, Echo Managed Services, is part of a much larger company that owns two British water utilities. Echo currently provides billing services to about one third of British water utilities.
GENERAL MANAGER, RICHARD HARRIS
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UTILITY • NOVEMBER 2021
“Being built on the Salesforce platform, Aptumo offers rich out-of-the-box functionality, helps water companies improve productivity, offers their customers much more choice, and a better service,” Mr Harris said. “Coliban Water’s successful implementation of Aptumo and the subsequent roll-out to North East Water means we now have an Australian version of Aptumo that provides other water utilities across Australia with significant start-up benefits and lower risks. “Coliban Water has already agreed to share its ‘Use Cases’, business processes, testing regimes and functionality with other Victorian water utilities to reduce their risk and accelerate their implementation.”
A TAILORED AND INTEGRATED SYSTEM Mr Harris said that being cloud-based, Aptumo is seamlessly upgraded regularly with minimal disruption to the organisation, which future-proofs the system. “The bottom line is, compared to other Tier 1 systems, Aptumo is cheaper to own and operate, can be tailored by in-house staff to meet operational needs, and comes fully integrated with the Salesforce platform, the world leader in CRM. “We are passionate about helping Australian water utilities capitalise on the potential of Salesforce. The substantial investment that Salesforce makes in new functionality guarantees the platform will keep up with customer expectations. “We’re also committed to helping our clients advance their digital strategies, giving them more autonomy over their internal systems, reducing risk, and improving the productivity of their billing processes,” Mr Harris said.
NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TONY KELLY AM
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