Jemena CIO, Cameron Dorse
Energy infrastructure provider, Jemena, has moved its customer data into the cloud to support restructured process lines across its electricity, water and gas assets and improve customer service.
Jemena CIO, Cameron Dorse, said the restructure is helping to drive commonality across processes around the way the company provides maintenance services, runs projects, and deals with customers.
In July last year, the organisation rolled out SAP Cloud for Customer to support its electricity and pipelines business. It will also be rolled out to its gas and distribution business in NSW later this year.
The cloud application – which is hosted at SAP’s data centre in Sydney – enables service teams to access information, manage tasks plus share and record details of up to 400 customer accounts while they are on site.
Dorse said customer service staff were previously recording customer details using Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
“It was very much based around the individual where now it’s being treated far more as a corporate record. The relevant people in the organisation can now actually see what those [customer] interactions are,” said Dorse.
In a future release, customer enquiries that are lodged through Jemena’s standalone web-based platforms will be stored and handled through the new CRM system, said Dorse.
Dorse said cost efficiency was not a driver for putting Jemena’s CRM system in the cloud, which the company has purchased under a ‘per user, per month’ payment agreement. Rather the rationale for moving to the cloud is the speed of service delivery – the CRM system was delivered in 10 weeks – and providing users with access to applications that are already pre-configured.
“It’s interesting that business users seem to be more accommodating or understanding of a system they can access in the cloud that is pre-configured on best practice.
“They are more willing to adopt that … that allows us to apply contemporary technology and adopt an industry best practice quickly,” said Dorse.
Still, Dorse said there are no plans to move the company’s core systems, running at the company’s data centre in Melbourne, into the cloud.
“At the moment we are going through quite a lot of change with our systems … doing a degree of consolidation across our various assets and that’s a program of work that will continue on for the next 18 months,” he said.
“Where we are using cloud at the moment is to stand up capability quickly and independently of some of our core systems transformation [activities]. If there is a general move to cloud – for cost efficiencies or not – that's something that we’ll assess further down the track.”
Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia
Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter:@ByronConnolly
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.