Wipro chosen as partner to transform IT service of British utility

Bengaluru:  Global software major Wipro on Thursday announced being chosen as a partner to transform retail billing and customer service of Thames Water, Britain's largest water and waste water services provider.[caption id="attachment_2556654" align="alignleft" width="380"] Reuters[/caption]"As part of a multi-year contract, we will develop new IT systems and processes to help Thames Water improve customer experience and drive operational efficiencies," the city-based outsourcing firm said in a statement here.The transformation will enable Thames Water, which serves 15 million customers in London and the Thames Valley region, to complete in the deregulated market.From April 2017, 1.2 million business/non-household customers in Britain will have the right to choose their water supplier, making it the world's largest retail water market."To achieve the milestone, we will help Thames implement a SAP industry solution for utilities billing, with a new market integration gateway and a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform," Wipro said.The new platform will replace a 20-year old legacy billing system, simplify customer experience and introduce flexibility for Thames."We are partnering with Wipro to transform our retail business processes and the technology platform. The integrated solution will be rolled out soon to help us capture a unified view of each customer and provide us with insights about them, through analytics," Thames managing director Ian Cain said on the occasion.Wipro president Anand Padmanabhan said the engagement with Thames would leverage the company's alliance with SAP (German software product) and draw upon insights from its experience from 20 water utility clients the world over.