One of Canada's largest municipalities enhances
customer service and speeds billing with Oracle Energy and Water
and Red Clay Consulting
AUSTIN,
Texas, Nov. 19, 2024 /CNW/ -- Peel Region, a
municipality west of Toronto, has
implemented Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud
Service to enhance service for its water billing account
holders. By upgrading its on-premises solution to the cloud,
Peel Region now has a modern customer platform that empowers better
experiences, more stable and consistent billing and collections,
and a solid foundation for future enhancements to water billing
services. After being successfully awarded the implementation
contract from a competitive procurement process, Red Clay
Consulting led the implementation to ensure the project aligned
with Peel's operational goals and cloud-first mission. Red Clay is a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork
(OPN).
With over 1.5 million residents and 200,000 businesses across
Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, the scope and criticality of Peel
Region's water and wastewater services is comparable to
Canada's largest utilities. Peel
supplies water to 340,000 residential and commercial accounts,
while also managing wastewater and stormwater billing for
residential and commercial customers.
"We operate with a mindset of doing everything in the best
interest of Peel Region customers and adding taxpayer value, so our
implementation decision weighed many different technical and
financial elements," said Peter
Parsan, Chief Information Officer for Peel Region. "Based on
the insight provided by Oracle and Red
Clay product experts in alignment with our IT platform and
security standards, we were able to determine that a cloud services
path was the best choice to improve service and operational
efficiencies. With our new customer care and billing platform that
leverages the Oracle Cloud, we can better execute our digital
strategy and make it easier for Peel staff to access information,
while simplifying system upgrades and boosting our IT
security."
A model of collaboration
Because Peel Region had used
a self-hosted Oracle solution for eight years, its dedicated team
had strong familiarity with the platform leading into the upgrade.
Leveraging Red Clay's ability to
model process improvement options in Oracle Utilities Customer Care
and Billing Cloud Service, the utility selected and configured the
most valuable bundles of enhanced functionality, with plans
underway to deploy Oracle's Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
capabilities and Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator. By
implementing the SaaS solution within the target timeframe—with
minimal training time required—Peel Region has quickly increased
business operational efficiencies and opportunities to demonstrate
business value.
"Our successful cloud deployment is undoubtedly a result of the
combined project team's ability to effectively work in concert,
share knowledge, and remain actively engaged to meet all criteria
from start to finish," said Gary
Wilde, director of information technology solutions for Peel
Region.
David Freudenstein, manager of IT
solutions delivery and support for Peel Region, added, "The close
collaboration and effective support, from both Red Clay's project team and Oracle's Customer
Success Manager and Cloud Support organization, helped ensure a
smooth transition from project completion to operational support of
CCBCS led by Peel's IT team."
Paul Marnell, CEO of Red Clay
Consulting, added, "Our collaboration with Peel Region and Oracle
exemplifies the transformative outcomes of combining great
technology with expert implementation. We are proud to support Peel
Region's digital strategy, helping to facilitate superior service
delivery to its customers."
Driving systematic success
Since implementing Oracle
Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud Service, Peel Region has
achieved significant efficiency gains. This includes accelerating
its nightly bill run times by 68%, decreasing times from more than
six hours to slightly under two hours. The utility has reduced
business and IT support staff efforts for nightly manual batch
monitoring by 20 hours per week, while also reducing additional
Peel Region IT infrastructure support staff tasks by 15 hours per
week. Today, Oracle helps Peel Region generate more than 1.3
million utility bills annually.
"Peel's Water Billing Team supports Canada's fourth largest water and wastewater
utility. With a state-of-the-art system of this size, it is
imperative that our enabling services are constantly innovating and
modernizing," said Cam Johnston,
director of public works operations support for Peel Region.
Khawer Rauf, public works manager
of billing for Peel Region, added, "The collection of revenue
through the timely and accurate customer billing data managed on
the Oracle CCBCS platform means we are constantly reinvesting into
both our system and processes ensuring the highest quality drinking
water and exceptional customer experiences."
"As more utilities embrace and implement cloud models, it's
essential to have the right combination of proven solutions, deep
industry experience, and well-orchestrated collaboration," said
Creighton Oyler, senior vice
president and general manager for Oracle Energy and Water. "Peel
Region and its customers are already benefitting from Oracle Energy
and Water's cloud technology due to the thorough, strategic
approach the Peel Regional leadership team applied to the project
with the strong collaboration and expertise of Red Clay and Oracle."
Customer-focused planning
Going forward, the
utility can now plan the implementation of a meter data management
system upgrade interoperating effectively with the robust Oracle
cloud foundation. In recognition of its comprehensive efforts, Peel
Region was the runner-up finalist for the 2024 Oracle Energy and
Water Award for Innovator of the Year.
Peel Region selected Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing
Cloud Service in July 2022 and
deployed the new system in November
2023.
To learn more about Oracle Energy and Water solutions visit
here.
About Red Clay Consulting
Focused solely on the
utility industry Red Clay advises,
delivers, and manages technical and business solutions based on
their clients' unique needs. Red
Clay works hand in hand with Oracle to offer our clients the
industry's most comprehensive and flexible software platform.
Red Clay's strong partnership with
Oracle Utilities provides our clients innovative and proven
solutions.
About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of
applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the
Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL),
please visit us at oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are
registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first
cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.
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SOURCE Oracle
