HCL Tech Inks Pact With US-Based Washington Gas for Customer Services

Bengaluru: HCL Technologies, India's fourth largest software services firm, on Tuesday said it has bagged a contract from US-based Washington Gas for providing IT solutions related to billing and customer care.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Washington Gas distributes natural gas to about 1.1 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. It is a subsidiary of WGL Holdings, a public utility holding company based in Washington, DC.

HCL has been engaged to perform an application modernisation for Washington Gas' legacy mainframe customer care and billing software, it said in a statement.

The engagement period with HCL is for 30 months.

The company will provide Washington Gas with functional and technical deployment of SAP's customer relationship and billing software, ClickSoftware Workforce Scheduling and Optimisation, and SAP's Mobile Work Manager application services, and hosting of non-production servers on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, it added.

Washington Gas will replace a decades-old mainframe billing solution, along with its scheduling and dispatch mobile workforce solution, with a single, integrated and more efficient platform.

The new solution is expected to help reduce integration complexity across the company's billing and customer service IT applications.

It will also enhance call centre and field operations processes, while giving the company improved control and reconciliation of utility billing.

"Yesterday's technologies cannot meet the expectations of today's consumer in terms of service and engagement. Utilities like Washington Gas are leveraging SAP and Microsoft's cloud technologies, both components of HCL's Engage Platform for Utilities, to enhance customer service," HCL Technologies executive vice president-public services Todd Crandall said.

This programme entails transformation that goes beyond system replacement by addressing the rising expectations ofconsumers and business benefits, he added.

"We look forwa rd to partnering with Washington Gas to deliver a digital transformation that will help boost its customer service delivery, leveraging Washington Gas' technology platform investments, and help meet the company's operational goals," he said.