Case Study - Horizon Power

​​Seamless billing system upgrade. Zero customer disruption. 

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Situation

Horizon Power is a State Government owned corporation that provides safe and reliable power to customers across regional and remote Western Australia. Maintaining multiple regional sites and 32 micro-grids, Horizon Power depends on efficient operating systems to service its customer base across a vast 2.3 million square kilometres. 

To meet the changing needs of customers and support its rapidly evolving business strategy, Horizon Power needed to upgrade its billing and customer information system to Gentrack Velocity V4. 

With a strong existing relationship, Horizon Power could rely on Computershare as a key implementation partner, working alongside its internal project management team and software provider Gentrack. 

The major challenge was to upgrade with minimum disruption to the business and customers. Some level of disruption is to be expected with large upgrades, however Horizon Power wanted to ensure there was no negative impact on the level of service for customers, the level of information available, or the level of regulatory compliance. All functionality needed to be achieved using existing levels of resources, within existing SLAs, and without material changes to average processing times. 

Solution

Collaboration was crucial to the project’s success. Computershare’s project team worked closely with the project managers from Horizon Power and Gentrack to establish a collective understanding of each party’s scope and build a strong teamwork ethos.    Our 20+ years’ experience also led us to involve operational users early on – a factor that would prove critical to the project’s success. 

We participated in an extensive design phase to help build the foundations for a high-quality solution within the budget,  timeframe and minimum disruption to the business. 

This included an impact assessment, collaborating with the project managers (face-to-face wherever possible) to ensure any issues and risks were identified and managed early.

People are key to a seamless transition, so we prepared the operations team through staff training, communications and work instructions. Plenty of time was allowed for User Acceptance Testing.

Outcomes

For any utility company, managing the change is as important as the solution. That’s why the project’s real success is in its seamless rollout with minimal negative impact on customers.

To measure this, Horizon Power set KPIs to achieve no greater than 10% increase in call centre enquiries, open billing validations, and the number of accounts not billed within 3 months of go-live. This was achieved within just 1 month of go-live. 

“Velocity V4 was deployed seamlessly, allowing us to continue to improve our service provision, and with no disruption to our customers.  We consider that a success,” Geoff White, Manager Customer Services.​

Since going live, Horizon Power has rolled out new digital technologies and intelligent pricing to support its changing customer ecosystem and satisfy the demand for affordable and sustainable electricity across its network.

It is a testament to the Computershare team that this project has exceeded our expectations and delivered an outcome with no negative customer impact. Remarkably, we have hit standard operational key performance indicators within a month of go live.​

- Geoff White, Manager Customer Services​

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