Vector goes live with Siebel software

By ADAM GIFFORD

Lines company Vector has gone live with an energy-sector specific version of the Siebel customer relationship management software.

It makes Vector the third New Zealand site using the United States-built software, which is considered at the top end of the CRM range. Mighty River has used Siebel in its call centre for a couple of years, and it has just been implemented in Southern Cross Healthcare.

Vector general manager commercial Maxine Elliot said Vector bought the eEnergy and eChannel applications at a discount because Siebel and implementation partners Deloitte Consulting wanted a flagship reference site for the new product.

"From what we saw in the market, we had prices that were several million dollars, and this was not," Ms Elliot said.

She said when Auckland power company Mercury Energy sold off its retail business to concentrate on its lines business, it was left with SAP Financials, a geographic information system and the Scada systems which manage the network.

It built a customer database on an SQL Server database to fill short term needs, but needed a more comprehensive system to manage fault calls, customers and partners.

"A lot of the systems we had were band aids. We run a 24 hour faults call centre, and we couldn't keep developing customer services using the semi-manual systems we had," Ms Elliot said.

"We were looking for something off the shelf we could install with little customisation and which we could upgrade.

Other packages were looked at, including Onyx and SAP, but Ms Elliot said most were tool sets which would need considerable modification.

"Siebel best fitted the business because of the eEnergy version and we were able to get it in quickly."

The implementation took six months.

Vector supplies power to 265,000 customer through seven retailers. While it no longer has a direct billing relationship, it needs to retain information in case anything goes wrong.

Ms Elliot said Siebel eEnergy allows Vector to integrate information and business processes across 120 in-house staff, up to 300 field contractors, call centre operators and the electricity retailers.

Business processes such as new connections and fault reports are now managed through one central system from the logging of a customer call to the dispatch of contract staff in the field, reporting a completed job and billing the customer.

Call centre operations are outsourced to Telnet. Four full time dedicated staff have access to the Siebel application through a high speed line, and up to 20 operators are brought onto the system in case of high demand.

Ms Elliot said Vector is now putting in a new Scada system, which will be integrated with Siebel.

"When faults come in to control, eEnergy will automatically know which customers are affected. That means we can be more proactive about the way we respond to customers."

She said the Siebel eChannel partner relationship management software will enable the Vector to streamline communications and transactions with its business partners.