The Saudi ministry of water and electricity has implemented the customer care and billing solution of Orcale to improve its service delivery.

The ministry replaced its legacy billing systems with a flexible, scalable and robust solution to better meet the changing needs of its customers, Oracle said in a statement.

Sami Abu Hilal, IT general manager, Ministry of Water and Electricity, "Because of the rapidly changing water industry in Saudi Arabia, it was critical that our services evolved into something that our customers could rely upon now, and in the future."
 
"There is a requirement to serve the customer more efficiently. To this end, we migrated to an electronic billing system that was flexible, scalable and capable of handling information intelligently across our customer base."

"The new system from Oracle gives us a 360-degree view of our customer information from anywhere in the organization," Hilal added.

As a first phase of the project, the utility is currently implementing Oracle E-Business Suite, including Oracle Financials, at the Ministry’s head office in Riyadh.

The Oracle solution is responsible for the ministry's entire customer life-cycle management, including water billing and portable water and ancillary services.

The roll-out has been completed in Al-MadinaAlMonawara Directorate by Oracle PartnerNetwork Gold level partner GTS Systems and contractor Arabic Computer Systems.

The second phase of the project will include roll-outs for Qassim and Eastern ProvinceDirectorates, said Oracle in its statement.

"The Saudi water industry has recently undergone significant changes challenging customer service and billing in a region where water is scarce," said Bastian Fischer, vice president, EMEA utilities industry strategy, Oracle.

"With the Oracle solution, the ministry can deliver consistent and superior customer service, with immediate visibility into consumer water consumption for increased water conservation and lower costs," he added.-TradeArabia News Service