Business Challenge story

To better secure its competitive advantage, CenterPoint Energy embarked on a project called Customer One, aimed at providing advanced capabilities for better, more intelligent interactions with customers. This business initiative the company envisioned would enable it to transform from a segmentation strategy to a more personalized strategy, which focuses more on customer preferences and situational awareness, anticipating not only the needs of the customers but also system performance. CenterPoint Energy sought a reliable IT services provide that could support its Customer One project and help transform its customer experience.

Transformation

Before starting the project to transform its customer experience, CenterPoint Energy evaluated many solutions in the marketplace and was impressed by the solution offered by IBM. The company realized that, instead of just focusing on a single application or functional platform, the IBM solution focused on an integrated technology application that would allow the client to optimize its processes, which in turn could meet the customers' expectations. So CenterPoint Energy joined forces with IBM Global Business Services - Business Consulting Services to support the Customer One initiative by streamlining the company's front-end and back-office processes based on SAP AG technology.

Results

25 seconds

saved per call, thanks to faster authentication and identification of customers

90 percent

increase in agent occupancy rates

30 percent

decrease in agent handle time with IBM technology and SAP HANA

About CenterPoint Energy

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. is a domestic energy-delivery company with more than USD21 billion in assets. Its business segments include electricity transmission and distribution, natural-gas distribution, competitive natural-gas sales and services, interstate pipelines and field services operations. The utility serves more than five million gas and electricity customers primarily in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas. Founded in 2002, CenterPoint Energy has approximately 8,800 employees and generated annual revenue in excess of USD8 billion in 2013.

Solution components

  • E&U: Customer Operations Transformation (COT)
  • GBS AD&I - EA - SAP
  • GBS BCS EA - SAP
  • IBM Global Business Services
  • IBM-SAP Alliance
  • SAP CRM

Take the next step

To learn more about the IBM SAP Alliance, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/sap

To schedule a SAP consultation with the IBM team, visit: ibm.biz/gbssap4hanana-scheduler

View more client stories or learn more about IBM Services

View Video