OREANDA-NEWS. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT services, consulting and business solutions firm, announced that it has been selected by Southern Water to implement a customer services and revenue transformation programme. The programme will combine front and back-end technology deployments with internal process redevelopment. Southern Water will benefit from enhanced customer service capabilities, improved cash collection and debt management, and will see a reduction in operating expenditure.

Darren Bentham, chief customer officer, Southern Water, commented, “At Southern Water, It’s our constant endeavour to improve our customer interactions and deliver a more efficient service. The transformational programme TCS is delivering will support two of our major goals – increase a customer’s ability to find a solution through self-service channels and empower our teams to deliver flawless service with first time resolution.

“Southern Water supplies water across some 4,450sqkm, and TCS has provided us with a roadmap for more flexible and efficient service delivery within this extensive area. Our customers will benefit from a highly consistent experience over web, mobile and interactive voice response channels. They will also find our customer service teams to be some of the best-informed and proactive in the industry.”

AS Lakshminarayanan, president - business group (telecom, hi-tech, media and IS, utilities), TCS, said, “It is incredibly hard for today’s businesses to meet demands for enhanced customer services or more sophisticated data management, while reducing the total cost of ownership for their infrastructure. The CRM system we’re deploying for Southern Water will help in the drive to provide industry-leading customer services, while data governance and analysis tools deliver better intelligence back into the business. With an increase in operational efficiency and an updated billing system, we will enable Southern Water to improve their revenue management. Ultimately they’ll be better positioned to meet the needs of their customers.”

Stuart Ravens, principal analyst, energy and utilities sector, Ovum, said, "Southern Water is embarking on a programme to upgrade its customer service and revenue business systems and to enable new business processes. The project is driven by some mission critical business outcomes, such as to improve customer experience and operational efficiency. To win this contract, TCS had to demonstrate deep domain experience and an understanding of Southern Water’s business processes. The deal is further evidence of TCS’s ability to win large and complex transformational programmes in the utilities industry."