After a closely contested evaluation process, the power company, which is understood to be the last vertically integrated utility in Australia, selected Aspect's Customer Relationship Portal in February and revealed last week that it completed the implementation on May 22.
According to WP manager of retail sales, Norm McKendry, the system is already delivering some competitive advantages to the company that finds itself subject to aggressive competition from internationally-owned operations.
WP is not part of the aggregated national electricity grid, and generates, transmits and distributes its own power for industrial and household consumers in the partially deregulated market.
McKendry, who refers to himself as one of the sponsors of what he described as a bold initiative by WP, said that the capacity of the system to integrate the call centre requirements in a multimedia setting was key to the decision.
"The system combines ACD (automated call distribution), IVR (interactive voice response) and multi-media portal for CTI (computer telephony integration)," McKendry said. "In recent times, several good integrated solutions have been developed."
While unwilling to disclose the cost of the new system, he said that it was within its budget, was competitively priced and was expected to meet WP's requirements for the next year or two.
Aspect Communications sales and business development director for Australasia, Peter McNamee, described Western Power as "very knowledgeable about its customer service requirements".
McNamee claimed that the Aspect customer relationship portal provides a "roadmap to full e-commerce". "But there is a distinction between e-CRM and e-business."
Visiting Australia for a promotional seminar and briefing, AC's director of product marketing Raj Shastri said that it is at the intersection of the two key call centre services. He described e-CRM as relating to the help transactions and e-business as the buy transactions.
According to Shastri, the key drivers for both are lowering the cost per transaction, the ability to automate the cross-selling and up-selling process, and the integration with legacy systems.
WP's McKendry, who illustrates the influence of non-IT management in such significant IT strategy, said that vendors have to make it easy for business people to understand the business benefits.
