BEDMINSTER, N.J., March 8, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- NUI Corporation (NYSE) today announced that Utility Business Services (UBS), its geospatial and customer information systems and services subsidiary, has signed a five-year contract with the Frederick County (MD) Division of Utilities and Solid Waste Management to provide customer information, billing and cash processing services for water and wastewater customers.
UBS will convert Frederick County to its fully featured account management product, Wins� CIS (customer information system).
Frederick County provides water/wastewater services to 22,000 accounts. The county mails nearly 105,000 bills annually while processing about 90,000 payments by mail and 15,000 through walk-in traffic to its field offices. The division is experiencing 5 percent annual account growth and needed a new account management system to meet the demands of that growth, according to Michael Marschner, the division director.
``We are committed to providing our customers with excellent service,'' Marschner said. ``We were operating an older customer information system that did not offer the flexibility and state-of-the-art features available to us through UBS' Wins CIS product. In addition, UBS offers one-stop shopping to its clients, providing account management software services, as well as the mailing of our bills and processing of payments. That frees us up to focus on our core operations.''
UBS will convert Frederick County to Wins CIS during the second quarter of calendar 2001. The company will also print and mail Frederick County's bills from its Union, NJ, mailing center and process customer payments at that facility, as well.
Frederick County will become the 29th water/wastewater utility UBS has converted to Wins CIS. The company also administers a natural gas version of the product for three of NUI's natural gas distribution operations and is presently converting the rest of the organization. A fully Web-enabled version of Wins CIS that will make the product Internet and/or intranet accessible for both clients and client customers will be available later this year.
``Wins CIS is a very user friendly and supportive product,'' said Robert Williams, UBS vice president. ``It is a premiere account management system for clients of all sizes because it provides state-of-the-art technology to back-office operations without a significant up front funding commitment or the exposure to obsolescence. Add in our ability to effectively perform billing and cash processing, and UBS becomes a perfect partner for organizations such as Frederick County, and especially when one considers our ever-present client support resource.''
UBS provides customer information and account management, billing, cash processing and geospatial services to 36 investor-owned and municipal natural gas and water/wastewater utilities. It is a subsidiary of NUI Corporation, headquartered in Bedminster, NJ. NUI operates natural gas utilities serving more than 376,000 customers in six states along the eastern seaboard. In addition to UBS, NUI also operates businesses involved in wholesale energy trading and portfolio management; retail energy sales; energy and environmental project development; energy consulting; sales outsourcing; and telecommunications.
