HCL Partners with Washington Gas to improve customer service

HCL Technologies has announced that it has signed an agreement with Washington Gas, which distributes natural gas to about 1.1 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Washington Gas is a subsidiary of WGL Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: WGL), a public utility holding company based in Washington, D.C.

HCL has been engaged to perform an application modernization for Washington Gas’ legacy mainframe customer care and billing software, leveraging HCL’s customer engagement expertise. HCL will provide Washington Gas with functional and technical deployment of SAP’s customer relationship and billing software, ClickSoftware Workforce Scheduling and Optimization, and SAP’s Mobile Work Manager application services, and hosting of non-production servers on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
 
“We required an enterprise application integration services partner who can help us transform our customer information systems and processes. HCL offers an impressive track record of SAP CRM and billing implementations for major utilities as well as a flexible and experienced deployment team to help us meet our goals,” said Nassar Akari, Division Head, Business Transformation Office, Washington Gas.

“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. This program entails transformation that goes beyond system replacement by addressing the rising expectations of consumers and business benefits. We look forward 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,” said Todd Crandall, Executive Vice-President – Public Services, HCL.
 
With HCL’s assistance, Washington Gas will replace a decade-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 center and field operations processes, while giving the company improved control and reconciliation of utility billing.