LANHAM, Md., October 04, 2007 - Group 1 Software, Inc., a Pitney Bowes Company (NYSE:PBI), today announced that National Grid, one of the world’s largest utility companies serving the United States and the United Kingdom, has implemented its co-sourced e2™ Vault and e2™ Service solution, part of Group 1 Software’s Customer Communication Management (CCM) portfolio.
Using the e2 solution to serve 3.3 million customers in New York and New England, National Grid centrally stores millions of documents, and gives both customers and call center customer service representatives (CSRs) immediate access to gas and electric service invoices, improving customer service and reducing costs. This high-performance solution archive is hosted in Group 1 Software’s premier data center.
“As a growing utility company, potentially doubling the size of our U.S. business soon, we wanted to reduce call center costs and centrally manage customer information with an integrated archive, print, and electronic CCM solution,” said Jeff Martin, billing director, National Grid US. “We were able to deploy the online solution in just weeks. We immediately started ingesting two to four million documents a month.”
Group 1 Software’s e2 Vault provides real-time indexing, compression, storage and retrieval of documents and data in their native format, delivering instant access to documents, regardless of their age or size. It also gives CSRs and customers instant online access to customer data and documents and stores original, native-print documents to help businesses meet legal requirements.
“Our CSRs also gain fast, immediate access to exact replica documents, providing efficient customer service and fast call resolution,” continued Martin. “Giving CSRs the ability to view the exact bill that the customer is seeing has definitely reduced our call center costs. On top of these product strengths, being hosted in Group 1 Software’s world-class data center further ensures that our data, documents and complete solution are secure, reliable and monitored 24/7 by knowledgeable personnel, reducing our in-house costs.”
The Group 1 Software Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solution for National Grid now ingests over 10 million pages per month, and, due to the high-speed compression and retrieval speeds, National Grid has seen no performance degradation as the archive has grown.
“From reducing cost and risks, streamlining business processes and improving customer service, National Grid is one of the many businesses who realize the benefits of – and are seeking – an end-to-end print and electronic CCM solution,” said Alan Slater, vice-president and general manager of Group 1 Software’s Customer Communication Management Division. “Businesses worldwide are also experiencing the many benefits of our high-performance vault, improving customer service and helping to meet regulatory compliance issues.”
National Grid realized further savings by enabling customers to view and pay their bills online. To date, over 125,000 customers in New York alone have enrolled for the e-bill option, which reduces print and mail costs.
“Our customers also appreciate that they can access up to two years of past bills from day one,” concluded Martin. This online billing option will be made available to National Grid’s New England electric service customers later this year.
About National Grid
National Grid Transco (LSE: NGT; NYSE: NGG) is an international energy delivery business with principal activities in the regulated electricity and natural gas industries. The company owns the high voltage electricity transmission network in England and Wales and operates the system across Great Britain. It also owns and operates the high-pressure gas transmission system in Britain and, through its gas distribution business, delivers gas to cover 10 million homes and businesses operating in related areas such as wireless infrastructure for broadcast and telecommunications, metering and interconnectors. Through the transmission and distribution of electricity and natural gas, National Grid serves close to four million customers in the U.S. across 29,000 square miles of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island.
About Group 1 Software
Group 1 Software (www.g1.com) turns data into results, providing innovative software solutions that enable our clients to better understand and connect with their millions of customers, prospects, and partners. Group 1 Software helps over 3,000 organizations maximize the value of customer data to improve profitability, increase effectiveness, and strengthen customer relationships, through consolidating, cleansing and enriching corporate data, and generating personalized business documents for multi-channel delivery, customer care and efficient business processing. Our comprehensive Customer Communication Management (CCM) solutions span from database to delivery, adding value to every aspect of communication and allowing clients to integrate intelligence throughout their mailstream. As part of Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI), a $5.6 billion company, Group 1 Software’s solutions are utilized by leaders in the insurance, financial services/banking, GIS/mapping, government, mail services, retail, telecommunications, utility, and other industries, including Entergy, ING, L.L. Bean, MapQuest, Microsoft, Safeco Insurance, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo.
e2, Group 1, Group 1 Software, and the Group 1 logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Group 1 Software, Inc. Pitney Bowes and the Pitney Bowes Process Bar Design are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pitney Bowes, Inc. All other brand names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.