To better serve nearly half a million customers across 14 states, Gas South relies on Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service. By embracing the combined power of the SaaS solutions and Oracle managed services, the utility has automated key processes to enhance customer care, reduce costs, and improve regulatory compliance. Gas South collaborated with Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) and its team of industry-focused technology delivery experts on the implementation.

“Gas South is driven by a desire to innovate across everything we do, including delivering superb customer service, automating processes for customer experience improvements and resource efficiencies, and maximizing data analytics to better inform critical business decisions,” said Greg Dunavant, vice president of customer operations for Gas South. “With OCS’ trusted guidance, we are capitalizing on the benefits of deep utility operations experience and technology expertise. Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service is transforming our customer experience in meaningful ways and leveraging automation and real-time data management to create powerful business outcomes.”

Dunavant will share Gas South’s journey with Oracle in a session at Customer Edge on Tuesday, March 26. An Atlanta-based subsidiary of Cobb EMC, Gas South is one of the largest retail natural gas providers in the Southeastern U.S. The company serves more than 470,000 residential, business and government customers in 14 states across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

Cloud-based service innovation

A longtime Oracle customer, Gas South implemented Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service to deliver high-performing customer care and metering in a cloud-optimized platform. With this solution, the natural gas retailer has improved customer experience and satisfaction by streamlining automatic payment controls and interim bill processes to reduce bill fluctuations.

Gas South has made strides in enhancing operational efficacy and cost-effectiveness through strategic automation initiatives, eliminating thousands of manual transactions each month as well as reducing monthly manual labor and analysis tasks. Furthermore, the utility has enhanced the customer experience by expediting the identification of exceptions that require attention, resulting in prompt issue resolution.

“Thanks to our long relationship with Gas South, we’re able to better anticipate when and how to implement the right Oracle Utilities CCS capabilities, at the right time, to support their KPI goals and innovation objectives,” Dave De Maio, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Customer Services for Industries. “Through Oracle’s customer and transaction-focused solutions and managed services support, our industry-aligned consulting group can help drive Gas South’s cloud-based innovation initiatives on time and on budget. This collaboration keeps Gas South’s technology current, enhances customer platforms to meet customer initiatives, and frees resources to focus on vital business needs.”

Data-driven innovation

Capitalizing on its efficiency gains, Gas South has also worked with OCS to implement additional solutions such as Oracle Utilities Market Transaction Management to help direct, manage, and reconcile its energy transactions in near and real time, across multiple systems.

In addition, the platform extracts and analyzes data generated by Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service for use on data clouds and external systems through the implementation of generalized data export (GDE) and Oracle Utilities Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). This helps the retailer address data management issues by applying the appropriate solution to each phase of the data’s lifecycle.

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