Ventyx Customer Powercor Named "Power Utility of the Year - Australia" for Outstanding Service During Victorian Floods

ATLANTA, Nov. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ventyx, an ABB company today announced that its customer Powercor, the largest electricity distributor in the Australian state of Victoria, has been named "Power Utility of the Year - Australia" in the prestigious 2012 Asian Power Awards for its stand-out approach to customer service during the state's worst-ever floods.

The Asian Power Awards – referred to as the "Oscars" of the power industry – recognize the extraordinary achievements of energy and utility organizations from across the Asia-Pacific region. Powercor received the award for its superior customer service and restoration of power during the January 2011 floods in Victoria, which caused mass outages affecting as many as 43,000 customers. 

"The vastness of the outage increased the workload for our fault-management crews by 60 percent overnight," said Alan King, manager of field mobile applications for Powercor's CHED Services. 

Fortunately, just a few months earlier, Powercor had deployed Ventyx Service Suite – an end-to-end mobile workforce management solution which delivers integrated forecasting, scheduling, dispatch and reporting.  Using Ventyx Service Suite integrated with an outage-management system, Powercor was able to maintain the same high level of productivity in the field despite the extreme conditions and high volume of work orders.

"During a very crucial time, Service Suite helped us restore a critical service to our clients in a timely and efficient manner," said King.  "Although our crews had limited experience with mobile devices and software at the time, they rose to the challenge – using the solution to rapidly restore the network while maintaining the same level of efficiency and job completion rates. And, it also allowed us to feed accurate information back to other systems for timely stakeholder reporting."

"Powercor's ability to respond rapidly and effectively to the historic flooding stands out as a model of efficiency and focus on customer service in today's utility industry," said Matthew Day, president of Asia Pacific region, Ventyx.  "Congratulations to Powercor for this prestigious industry recognition for the outstanding handling of its field operations team during an emergency situation."

Two Ventyx customers, Powercor and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), received a combined total of three awards at this year's Asian Power Awards. Asia is a growing market for Ventyx as more companies in the region seek to improve the efficiency and performance of assets over their lifespan. 

About Ventyx

Ventyx, an ABB company, is a world-leading supplier of Industrial Enterprise Software for essential industries such as energy, mining and public infrastructure. Ventyx solutions bridge the gap between information technologies (IT) and operational technologies (OT), enabling clients to make faster, better-informed decisions in both daily operations and long-term planning strategies. Some of the world's largest organizations rely on Ventyx solutions to minimize risk, enhance operational and financial performance, and execute the right strategies for the future. For more details, see www.ventyx.com.

SOURCE Ventyx