Aptumo Australia Pty Ltd welcomes new GM Matt Bowd
Aptumo, the billing system built specifically to meet the needs of water utilities, continues to strengthen its team in Australia with the appointment of Matt Bowd as General Manager.
Matt joins the team as Richard Harris, previously General Manager here in Australia, is promoted to Software Services Director and a member of the board of Echo Managed Services, Aptumo’s UK based parent company.
Richard told us “Aptumo has made quite an impression on the Australian water sector over the past few years with both Coliban Water and North East Water adopting the system. Leading the Aptumo team here as we’ve achieved these significant successes, has been an incredible experience but being asked to join the Echo MS board doesn’t mean that I will be stepping away from activities here in Australia.
"In fact, quite the opposite; my new role puts me right at the heart of plans for making Aptumo the billing system of choice for water utilities here as well as overseas. I’ll have greater input into how Aptumo engages with our water sector to enable water utilities to recognise the full potential of Aptumo as both a billing and customer service tool."
As the 2022 VicWater Annual Conference approaches, we’ve been introducing VicWater members to Aptumo, helping them to get to know a bit more about this flexible, scalable billing solution. Being native to Salesforce makes Aptumo much more than just a billing system as it opens up a world of possibilities to improve customer engagement and experience.
Matt Bowd says “I’m really excited to be joining the Aputmo team at this stage of its journey into the Australia water sector. I’ve worked in utilities for more than twenty years, 10 of them in the water sector, and I’ve always found water utilities to be very open and welcoming environments.
"We’re dealing with a precious resource so it’s not just a nuts-and-bolts, get-the-job-done role. Sustainability and forward planning are essential considerations in everything we do. This is where technology can really help, as well as improving our customers’ experience.”
Like many industries, the water sector is going through a period of transformation, much of which is being led by the customer. Matt explains “Customer expectations have changed significantly because of their experiences with suppliers of other products or services. They, rightly, expect clear, concise, and accurate billing, and efficient routes to engage with their suppliers. An element of self-service is very much the norm in most transactions these days so that is an evolving requirement, while being kept informed about the environmental impacts of the service is also becoming more important.”
Both Matt and Aptumo can play a role in helping water utilities to not just meet these expectations, but to exceed them.
Briefly, Aptumo is a customer, rather than property-centric software tool that is native to the Salesforce platform. Agents using Aptumo have a full 3600, real-time view of a customer’s billing and service history at their fingertips during every engagement, which means that enquiries can be handled quickly and efficiently, helping to reduce hand-over processes. It can be used in association with a utilities’ preferred CRM or, and this is when it can really help move customer experience up to the next level, in partnership with Salesforce. Using Salesforce as the lead CRM would enable the utility to access over 2,500 business solution apps through the App Exchange.
Combining Matt’s hands-on experience in the water sector with this powerful, scalable tool means that a bespoke customer management solution, tailored to exact financial and regulatory standards, is within reach of all water utilities.
“In my opinion” Matt said “Aptumo is a game changer. It’s flexible, scalable and because it’s native to the Salesforce platform, it is, essentially, future proof. My role is to work with utilities every step of the way from enquiry and development, on to implementation and embedding. I can sit down with a client’s team to identify what their key needs are and guide them through the adoption of the Aptumo solution in a way that suits them and their customers best. I’ll have over 120 technical and customer experience experts within the Echo MS team to call on, to make sure that Australian water utilities benefit from the global best practice knowledge that Echo MS is known for.”
Matt is clearly an advocate of Aptumo, so is there anything it can’t deliver for him: “I love the Australian water industry and have very fond memories of the views from Mount Stromlo from an office I once had at the water treatment centre there. Aptumo can’t recreate those for me, but that’s not a bad thing as I certainly won’t have time to sit and look out of the window now that the Australian water sector is going to want to know more about how Aptumo can help to shape its future!”.
Aptumo Australia Pty Ltd is proud to be a major sponsor of the 2022 VicWater Annual Conference in Melbourne on 8 - 9 June 2022. We’ll be sharing more information about Aptumo with you over the coming months. Visit the Aptumo website or follow them on LinkedIn to keep up to date.
*This sponsored content was brought to you by Aptumo
