Peel Region Innovates in Delivery of Water Billing Services with Oracle Cloud Technology

One of Canada's largest municipalities enhances customer service and speeds billing with Oracle Energy and Water and Red Clay Consulting

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Peel Region, a municipality west of Toronto, has implemented Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud Service to enhance service for its water billing account holders. By upgrading its on-premises solution to the cloud, Peel Region now has a modern customer platform that empowers better experiences, more stable and consistent billing and collections, and a solid foundation for future enhancements to water billing services. After being successfully awarded the implementation contract from a competitive procurement process, Red Clay Consulting led the implementation to ensure the project aligned with Peel's operational goals and cloud-first mission. Red Clay is a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

With over 1.5 million residents and 200,000 businesses across Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, the scope and criticality of Peel Region's water and wastewater services is comparable to Canada's largest utilities. Peel supplies water to 340,000 residential and commercial accounts, while also managing wastewater and stormwater billing for residential and commercial customers.

"We operate with a mindset of doing everything in the best interest of Peel Region customers and adding taxpayer value, so our implementation decision weighed many different technical and financial elements," said Peter Parsan, Chief Information Officer for Peel Region. "Based on the insight provided by Oracle and Red Clay product experts in alignment with our IT platform and security standards, we were able to determine that a cloud services path was the best choice to improve service and operational efficiencies. With our new customer care and billing platform that leverages the Oracle Cloud, we can better execute our digital strategy and make it easier for Peel staff to access information, while simplifying system upgrades and boosting our IT security."

A model of collaboration
Because Peel Region had used a self-hosted Oracle solution for eight years, its dedicated team had strong familiarity with the platform leading into the upgrade. Leveraging Red Clay's ability to model process improvement options in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud Service, the utility selected and configured the most valuable bundles of enhanced functionality, with plans underway to deploy Oracle's Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) capabilities and Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator. By implementing the SaaS solution within the target timeframe—with minimal training time required—Peel Region has quickly increased business operational efficiencies and opportunities to demonstrate business value.

"Our successful cloud deployment is undoubtedly a result of the combined project team's ability to effectively work in concert, share knowledge, and remain actively engaged to meet all criteria from start to finish," said Gary Wilde, director of information technology solutions for Peel Region.

David Freudenstein, manager of IT solutions delivery and support for Peel Region, added, "The close collaboration and effective support, from both Red Clay's project team and Oracle's Customer Success Manager and Cloud Support organization, helped ensure a smooth transition from project completion to operational support of CCBCS led by Peel's IT team."

Paul Marnell, CEO of Red Clay Consulting, added, "Our collaboration with Peel Region and Oracle exemplifies the transformative outcomes of combining great technology with expert implementation. We are proud to support Peel Region's digital strategy, helping to facilitate superior service delivery to its customers."

Driving systematic success
Since implementing Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud Service, Peel Region has achieved significant efficiency gains. This includes accelerating its nightly bill run times by 68%, decreasing times from more than six hours to slightly under two hours. The utility has reduced business and IT support staff efforts for nightly manual batch monitoring by 20 hours per week, while also reducing additional Peel Region IT infrastructure support staff tasks by 15 hours per week. Today, Oracle helps Peel Region generate more than 1.3 million utility bills annually.

"Peel's Water Billing Team supports Canada's fourth largest water and wastewater utility. With a state-of-the-art system of this size, it is imperative that our enabling services are constantly innovating and modernizing," said Cam Johnston, director of public works operations support for Peel Region.

Khawer Rauf, public works manager of billing for Peel Region, added, "The collection of revenue through the timely and accurate customer billing data managed on the Oracle CCBCS platform means we are constantly reinvesting into both our system and processes ensuring the highest quality drinking water and exceptional customer experiences."

"As more utilities embrace and implement cloud models, it's essential to have the right combination of proven solutions, deep industry experience, and well-orchestrated collaboration," said Creighton Oyler, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Energy and Water. "Peel Region and its customers are already benefitting from Oracle Energy and Water's cloud technology due to the thorough, strategic approach the Peel Regional leadership team applied to the project with the strong collaboration and expertise of Red Clay and Oracle."

Customer-focused planning 
Going forward, the utility can now plan the implementation of a meter data management system upgrade interoperating effectively with the robust Oracle cloud foundation. In recognition of its comprehensive efforts, Peel Region was the runner-up finalist for the 2024 Oracle Energy and Water Award for Innovator of the Year.

Peel Region selected Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Cloud Service in July 2022 and deployed the new system in November 2023.

To learn more about Oracle Energy and Water solutions visit here.

About Red Clay Consulting
Focused solely on the utility industry Red Clay advises, delivers, and manages technical and business solutions based on their clients' unique needs. Red Clay works hand in hand with Oracle to offer our clients the industry's most comprehensive and flexible software platform. Red Clay's strong partnership with Oracle Utilities provides our clients innovative and proven solutions.

About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com. 

Trademarks
Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.

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SOURCE Oracle