BRUSSELS — Friday, 18 January 2008 — Actaris has signed a four-year contract to provide an extended Prepayment Managed Service to EDF Energy nationwide. This service enables enhanced two-way functionality and more effective remote management of consumers’ smart key prepayment meters.
Actaris’ service-based Prepayment solution, operated at its Felixstowe site, provides data warehousing, technical support, data processing and reporting, all supported by a Business-to-Business call centre to manage enquiries between EDF Energy and Actaris.
EDF Energy will continue its traditional direct customer contact role, while Actaris will manage the dataflows to and from the meter points through its TaleXus® system. This will enable remote management of all meter points including meter commands, real-time issuing of customer tokens and tariff updates, all of which will help EDF Energy reduce the cost and improve the quality of customer service.
“This has been a great project, with the Actaris and EDF Energy teams working closely together to deliver excellent results,” said John Richards, EDF Energy’s Head of Market Operations & Customer Experience, Specialist Markets. “We are looking forward to the launch and to delivering an even better service for our electricity key prepayment customers.”
EDF Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the EDF SA, one of Europe’s largest energy groups, is one of the largest energy companies in the UK, employing almost 13,000 people and supplying energy to approximately 5.5 million customers. Actaris has been building up the architecture needed to start migrating EDF Energy’s installed key meter base (covering the full range of smart key meters including Actaris ACE9000 KBD) to the enhanced Managed Service solution at the end of January.
This Agreement is the latest in a series for Actaris UK’s Prepayment Managed Service, reinforcing the company’s global position as the leader in prepayment metering, and it also coincides with a major milestone as Actaris surpasses its one millionth Prepayment Managed Service end customer.
“For Actaris UK, this partnership marks another important milestone in our strategy to provide increased value for our utility clients by supplying not only meters, but also specialised services to manage and warehouse meter data,” said Nigel Butcher, Actaris UK General Manager. “Actaris works with EDF group companies throughout the world, and has a long standing relationship with EDF Energy in the UK. I’m delighted that they have become our latest prepayment services client.”
About Actaris
Actaris is a subsidiary of Itron Inc., a leading technology provider to the global energy and water industries. Itron Inc. operates as Actaris outside of North America and Itron in North America. Our company is the world’s leading provider of metering, data collection and software solutions, with nearly 8,000 utilities worldwide relying on our technology to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water. Our products include electricity, gas, water and heat meters; data collection and communication systems, including automated meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI); meter data management and utility software applications; project management, installation, and consulting services. To know more, start here: www.actaris.com.
For additional information, contact:
Christina Kelly
Marketing/Communications Specialist
(509) 891-3268
christina.kelly@itron.com
