Greentech Lead America: Water metering solutions provider Itron has signed a five-year contract with British Gas to provide a full suite of services in support of more than 1.25 million electricity prepayment customers throughout the UK.
Under this contract, Itron is providing a B2B customer support call center, prepayment vending transaction management, meter data management, data reporting, technical support and consulting services.
Itron and British Gas have been partners since 2004. The companies have now agreed to a contract that will run until at least the end of 2017 and enables the expansion of the use of Itron’s technology, which already provides features such as in-home vending.
British Gas will be able to continue delivering market-leading solutions to its existing and new prepayment customers while also modernizing and adapting to the developing smart metering standards, thereby ensuring increased levels of efficiency, quality of service and customer satisfaction.
Itron’s Managed Services provides a prepayment solution to over 3.4 million homes across the UK, which includes collection and processing of prepayment meter data (such as vending, debt and credit details) as well as issuing prepayment keys, providing tariff updates and solution support.
Itron also offers energy suppliers with solution enhancements such as EnergyPOINT.net, Itron’s in-home vending service, which enables customers to purchase and add credit to their meter from the comfort of their home rather than visiting a retail outlet.
In another recent development Itron formed a strategic alliance with Choice, a Brazilian technology company, to integrate and jointly market a non-technical loss (NTL) solution to utilities around the world, with a strong focus in Brazil.
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