Infor’s first phase implementation for Riverina Water sees key benefits

Cloud company Infor has reported reported Riverina Water has seen a strong return on investment from the first phase implementation of an ongoing digital transformation project.

The original go-live phase for Riverina Water commenced in July 2023 when Infor deployed Infor CloudSuite Public Sector, which includes Infor Financials & Supply Management, Infor CIS Billing and Infor Enterprise Performance Management (EPM).

These solutions are to be used for integrated planning, budgeting, forecasting and financial consolidation, business intelligence and analytics.

The benefits seen across the NSW-based utility company includes rates certificate management being shifted online, with customers to use a self-service portal instead of manual processes.

As a result of the initial implementation, Riverina Water was able to reduce internal manual effort and improved certificate meter readings by capturing data live through a mobile application, cutting turnaround time for customers by more than six days.

Customer requests are now maintained in Infor CloudSuite Public Sector as opposed to a previously used electronic document management system. This change has significantly reduced manual handling of customer requests and created the opportunity to analyse data, such as response times and trends.

The bill payments process has also been improved using standard billing capabilities in Infor CloudSuite Public Sector, with a 30 per cent reduction in payment time over a 12-month period and continuing to move down as well as increasing bill accuracy.

Currently, more than 136,000 meter readings have been reviewed using Infor CloudSuite Public Sector’s algorithm resulting in significantly improved bill accuracy for customers.

Riverina Water CEO Andrew Crakanthorp said Infor’s deep industry knowledge has been a key factor in transforming legacy architecture into an agile, efficient platform that meets current and future needs.

“[This] has enabled process consistency and greater transparency throughout our organisation,” he said.

Riverina Water director corporate services Emily Tonacia said Infor’s technology was central to the organisation’s customer-centric approach in providing best-practice customer service.

“From frontline teams to external stakeholders, everyone’s benefiting. Infor’s technology is helping us streamline operations, boost customer experiences and unlock powerful insights,” she said.

As Riverina Water’s digital transformation project moves into the next phase, future opportunities with Infor include advanced asset management and further automation to streamline operations and service delivery to generate insights for decision making that will benefit more than 77,000 customers.

Infor senior vice president and general manager Asia Pacific and Japan Terry Smagh said Riverina Water had set a high benchmark for other utilities to follow.

“It’s very gratifying to see such strong results for Riverina Water after the first phase of Infor CloudSuite Public Sector went live,” he added. “In today’s world customers expect 24/7, always-on functionality with real-time capabilities.”