Allan Sampson (Gentrack)
NZX-listed utilities software vendor Gentrack played a key behind-the-scenes role in the $441 million sale of Trustpower's retail business.
Gentrack delivered an Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based project allowing Trustpower's commercial and industrial businesses to operate independently of its residential retail division in anticipation of the sale.
Tauranga-based Trustpower needed the separation to be delivered within a tight timeframe to enable a smooth transition of the residential business to a new owner, which eventually turned out to be Mercury NZ.
This complex transformation had to be delivered without impacting customer billing and services while maintaining Trustpower’s ability to continue offering innovative products and services. The utility had achieved some of the lowest switching rates in the industry with over half of its customers signed up for dual fuel, electricity-telco or triple play bundles.
Gentrack had been working with Trustpower since 1992, providing software to manage customer experiences, reduce cost to serve and build customer loyalty through bundled offers. It brought knowledge of the utility's existing systems and processes, as well as the NZ energy market, to the project.
The vendor had also been progressively building out its systems into AWS to deliver cloud-native software after rolling out cloud-based integrations in 2018.
“Gentrack has been our trusted partner for many years and has played a key role in enabling us to differentiate using our bundled offering," said Trustpower’s Matt van Deventer, general manager of technology and delivery.
"This project shows how, together with Gentrack, we can deliver complex business change at pace and as a result we now have the foundations in place for the next phase of our retail journey."
Gentrack and Trustpower worked together to deliver an accelerated and agile programme to replicate the existing retail solution for deployment on AWS. Using Gentrack's cloud environments for the data migration removed a significant transformation cost and a cloud platform on which further commercial and industrial innovation could be delivered.
The key to delivering the cloud transformation was the strong partnership approach adopted, said Allan Sampson, general manager of Gentrack NZ.
"By collaborating from start to finish, we were able to identify potential roadblocks and use our combined knowledge and delivery expertise to meet the tight testing, dress rehearsal and cutover milestones."
Key capabilities to measure user consumption and generate and distribute accurate bills, called "meter-to-cash", and integrations were redeployed into the cloud with cloud-managed services and maintenance to be delivered by Gentrack's cloud services team.
Commercial and industrial processes were also reconfigured for operations including those essential for ongoing regulatory compliance.
