Utility to outsource customer service IT

Company seeks bids for five-year contract worth £1.5m in first year

United Utilities Water is to outsource the management of a recently installed customer services application, in a contract worth £1.5m in its first year.

The utility is seeking a third party to maintain the system, which handles fault fixes, preventive maintenance, billing, debt recovery and customer contacts.

Mark Barnes, head of customer strategy at United Utilities Water, says the contract is due to begin in April 2006 and will last for five years.

There will be an option for an additional four years based on performance, with potential to extend to other parts of United Utilities’ business.

‘The system we have supports an 800-seat customer call centre, covering the north-west of England, including the Lake District and Merseyside, and going down along the Welsh border,’ said Barnes.

‘We have a customer base of about three million, so we need maintenance on it to be as efficient as possible.’

Barnes says United Utilities is looking for niche players to make bids for the contract, which is one of four contracts up for tender.

‘Three of the four we’ve let out to date include meter reading, bill production/scanning, and the customer system,’ he said.

The successful contractor will manage and maintain the Alto system, as well as testing scripts providing problem resolution, impact assessment and support for user training.

Barnes says United is also looking for improvements to be made to the system.

‘We are looking for projects over the next three to five years to extend what we have, to launch systems such as e-billing and self-service, for example,’ he said.

The invitation to tender follows recent IT projects at United Utilities, including the installation of a thin client system for 12,000 employees in a project that began in summer 2004.

The £1.5m Esteem Systems deal replaced legacy computers with Windows-based terminals that use Citrix software, generating significant cost savings.