A North East water company is creating 100 jobs in the region after spotting a gap in the market for a new tech platform for the water industry.
Water retailer Everflow Group has launched a subsidiary company, called Everflow Tech, that will provide software solutions to the industry.
The new firm has already hired seven members of staff but plans to grow its team to 200 over the next three years.
As part of its offering the company is creating a new retail management and billing platform, which will be known as Eclipse.
The platform will include a broker portal that will allow customers to access instant quotes for their water.
The brokerage software has already been used by Everflow’s in-house teams but has now been launched as an application that can be sold to water retailers wanting a comprehensive billing management system.
Josh Gill, Everflow Group’s managing director, said: “Through our experience with Everflow Water, we identified some significant challenges faced by retailers in terms of the technology available to the newly deregulated water market.
“One of our company values is ‘pioneering’, and I believe Eclipse is one of our greatest examples of this to date – we decided to innovate rather than accept the less-than-perfect solutions that were available to us.
"The result has been better than we ever imagined – Eclipse has received fantastic feedback from employees, brokers and the retailers who have invested.”
Everflow, which is based at Wynyard Business Park, developed its software in collaboration with IT consultancy group Waterstons. The tech has helped Everflow boost its customer base to 20,000 and grow its revenue to more than £40m.
Rob Burgess, executive consultant at Waterstons, said: “The development of Eclipse has been a fantastic experience for us at Waterstons, the Everflow Tech team are constantly thinking up new ideas, which makes any partnership very exciting. We can’t wait to continue working together and developing innovative new products.”
Everflow Tech’s senior project manager Patrick Randall added: “Everflow Tech has managed to bring Eclipse to other water retailers with great success. We want our innovations to make the water market more efficient and successful for retailers, water brokerages and most importantly, customers.
“With this first product launch, we have achieved just that and going forward, the company will continue to develop new and improved technology solutions for the water industry.”
Everflow has also been nominated for the Innovation award at the Utility Week awards. The team will travel to London in December to attend the awards where they will be competing against Octopus Energy, South East Water and UK Power Networks.
