entyx™, the world's largest private software provider to the utility industry, today announced that Citizens Gas & Coke Utility has signed an agreement with the company to upgrade its customer management capabilities with the latest customer information system (CIS)/billing solution from Ventyx, Customer Suite Release 4.1.

Customer Suite is a powerful solution for managing utilities' customer-facing processes, from simple inquiries to marketing initiatives to complex billing. The latest release of Customer Suite delivers improved data security and increased flexibility in charge calculations, billing and service order management, as well as enhancements to the user interface. As a result, Release 4.1 will enable Citizens Gas users to more easily apply rate discounts, create service orders for customers not tied to premises, and provide additional protection for sensitive customer data, helping the utility continue its long-standing tradition of industry-leading customer satisfaction.

"Citizens Gas is proud of our record of satisfying our customers," said Andy Proctor, Citizens Gas CIO. "For the last five years we have been ranked among the top four utilities in the Midwest for overall customer satisfaction, according to an independent study by J.D. Power and Associates. As a long-standing customer, we know that Ventyx solutions have played a vital role in this success. Upgrading to release 4.1 of Customer Suite keeps us on a baseline version of the software to help us continue this tradition while laying the foundation to easily implement future advances in the solution."

Citizens Gas joins a growing number of utilities who have implemented or made plans to implement the new solution. Among these clients are Connexus Energy; City of Charlotte, NC; City of Fort Collins, Colorado; City of Provo, Utah; City of Wichita, Kansas; and National Water Commission of Jamaica.

"Citizens Gas' decision to leverage our latest release continues a long-standing partnership with this extraordinarily successful utility, and it provides further validation of the market demand for our solutions," said Ventyx President and CEO Vince Burkett. "Already more than 100 utilities are utilizing our CIS solution to improve business processes while meeting the needs of their customers. Release 4.1 will help grow this number even further as it delivers the capabilities that utilities need to thrive in today's challenging energy market?flexible rate calculations, efficient billing and service order management?all while ensuring customers' personal information is protected from theft."

Tue Mar 25 10:24:00 CDT 2008