Infolink out to spark the right connection

By ADAM GIFFORD

An Auckland software firm believes it has the answer to the problems power companies have in switching customers.

More than 200,000 customers have changed supplier since switching started in April last year, but poor coordination between companies and inflexible software means it can cost firms hundreds of dollars to process each switch.

Infolink has spent the year tailoring its Infoshare web collaboration system into a product called Energy Connect, which it intends selling to power firms on an application service provider basis.

"We've talked to hundreds of people at every level of the power industry while we were developing this," said marketing manager Phil Dagger.

"We've built awareness and validated our approach. Now it's time to get ink on paper."

Infolink aims to sign up one or two of the larger retailers to take a leadership role and prove that the Energy Connect concept works. "If we get a reasonable volume of churn, the process should snowball."

The Infoshare platform came out of an idea managing director Larry Hill had to resolve problems a customer, Epson Printers, was having coordinating its service operation.

Infolink manages the Epson call centre. If the call centre operator cannot resolve the problem over the phone, details of the problems are entered into Infoshare, where it becomes available to any one of the 50 Epson service agents who will be responsible for fixing it.

The software controls the workflow, and is used by the service agent to order parts. The system links to the accounting department, so all the invoices are generated appropriately.

"When we implemented this, within six weeks we had a 59.8 per cent improvement in the throughput of jobs," Mr Hill said.

The average time to fix a printer has come down from 13 days to five.

"Infoshare is a collaborative engine that allows you to do process coordination over the internet," Mr Hill said.

"The system is mainly written in XML [extensible mark-up language], so it exists for the internet.

"The cute part is the way we view the data - it's activity-based viewing. That avoids the problem of information pollution. People get just the information they need to do their part of the job.

"As jobs go into each stage we have all these bells and whistles to alert the appropriate person that there is data to look at. We can send an SMS [short message service] pager message or a fax or e-mail automatically out of our system."

Other Infoshare customers include Acer, Adis Press, Mighty River Power and Eagle Technology.

Infolink's revenues come from consulting and implementation fees, and from licence fees.

He said Infolink recognised a big national and international opportunity in the energy retail sector.

"I looked at all the problems people were having switching, and realised this was largely a process issue."

Development of Energy Connect was boosted with the injection of $1.8 million in venture capital backing from New Zealand Post, which took a 35 per cent stake in the company.