Sydney Water selects shortlist for ‘once in a generation’ IT overhaul

Sydney Water has shortlisted Wipro, Cap Gemini and Accenture as it seeks a technology partner to design, build and run new ERP, billing and CRM systems.

A call for expressions of interest was made in June by Sydney Water’s new CIO George Hunt for what he described as a ‘once in a generation investment in technology’.

Hunt, formerly employed by Wipro before joining the utility in March, said at the time that Sydney Water was undergoing a major digital transformation and the new partner would help it deliver “a customer focused, forward thinking, mobile and integrated business”.

The three companies now face a competitive interactive dialogue and tender process before a winning tender is selected.

Paul Freeman executive, customer and business experience platforms at Sydney Water, said the expressions of interest were strong.

“We were very impressed by the response from the market after announcing our plans to find a new technology partner,” he said.

“We are confident that our selection processes will result in a collaborative and mutually beneficial relationship between Sydney Water and our chosen partner.”

The EoI covered design and development, organisational change management, platform implementation, legacy integration, data migration, reporting and deployment.

Sydney Water’s existing billing platform was written on an IBM mainframe in the 1980s using the PL/I programming language. It ran a successful billing system prototype with SAP last year. The utility offered customers online billing – allowing them to view, pay and see past bills online – from Monday last week.

George Hunt said the successful partner would “win our hearts and minds” and “recognise the value in working together to help each other succeed”.

Speaking to CIO Australia in June, he added the company was now “open for business”.

“There’s a different philosophy around partnering with organisations,” he said. “Historically we’ve been quite closed to working in a collaborative fashion with vendors and suppliers and other companies. We’re not going to do that anymore.”