Papua New Guinea Power (PNG Power) headquartered in Port Moresby, has engaged New Zealand-based software company Talgentra to upgrade its billing and customer management system to Gentrack Velocity.

As Papua New Guinea’s only supplier of electricity and with over 75,000 customers, PNG Power’s drive for automation and cost minimization is no different than that of a utility business in New Zealand or Australia. A long-time user of Gentrack, PNG power recognized with the recent release of Gentrack Velocity as an opportunity to enhance its business through adoption of workflow management and integration tools.

Malcolm Carter, Commercial General Manager at PNG Power commented: “We have used Gentrack since 2002 to manage all aspects of our customer service and pre-pay billing activities. Given that many of our customers are in remote areas, pre-pay metering makes up the majority of metering assets. Therefore the new Velocity system is expected to provide greater levels of automation, especially in the areas of pre-pay data management, integration with our back office pre-pay systems and processing of customer payments.”

Considered the low-risk option for PNG Power, Gentrack Velocity was implemented on a new Oracle database platform over a 6-month period, going live in December 2007. As a core system within PNG power, the impact of the upgrade is likely to be significant, with new workflow tools for enhanced management of work orders, customer service requests and offline payment receipting activities.

Carter said, “The flexibility of Gentrack has enabled PNG power to update its network infrastructure – including the delivery of a new Oracle DB for enhanced reporting. We needed a platform and billing solution to take us forward another 10 years, especially as we look for new ways to reduce cost to serve and deliver services to our customers.”