Delta

The liberalisation of the energy market for private customers in 2003 has resulted in major changes to the way that energy companies operate throughout Europe. Very many of the players had a past history of being (at least partly) public sector companies. Before the deregulation, these companies were not really market or customer oriented, and obviously their ICT systems were not set up to work in a customer-oriented way either.

A flood of laws, rules and directives was released by the liberalisation. The European Parliament and also the Dutch authorities have laid down strict rules for the administration systems of the power and gas companies. One of the greatest challenges was to set up detailed metering and connection registers and to follow set procedures for customer processes, allocation and reconciliation. These are major modifications on the technical level, but above all on the human level too.

The Dutch company DELTA is a prime example of an energy company that has gone through this process of adaptation. Delta is a multi-utility company supplying a broad range of services and products. Gas, water, electricity, waste processing, cable Internet and radio and television signals are the most important of these. More than 200,000 customers rely on Delta for their utilities. DELTA has over 1,500 employees; the head office is located in Middelburg and there are various other offices and service centres in the province of Zealand.

Delta has placed its data and working environment on MECOMS, from Ferranti. MECOMS is an integrated environment for the management of customer and metering data. The package is specifically tailored to the energy market and is kept up to date by Ferrari’s experts to ensure that it always complies with the latest legal requirements and rules.

"Before deregulation, our activities were focused mainly on the operation of the networks and products, rather than on the user," says Delta’s Ad van Sluijs. "The liberalisation of the market brought the obligation to maintain registers and to start thinking and acting with a customer focus. Our information was fragmentary, and it was spread over various older systems. To switch our way of working and make sure that the whole process of mental change went successfully, the first thing we had to do was arrange for a new information system."

Previously, when the energy market was deregulated for business customers, Delta had already invested in a new, open invoicing system, a CRM environment and a register system, but these were not adequate for the retail market.

Delta adapted its ICT processes to the new situation in a very short space of time. Ad van Sluijs: "We carried out an accelerated package selection at the start of 2003, and after a six-week assessment MECOMS came out as best. MECOMS proved best adapted to the new regulations and procedures of the liberalisation. And Ferranti was the company most familiar with the subject matter; they understood the extent of the change process, and how difficult it was."

The system was then implemented in six months. Van Sluijs again: "During the implementation we migrated the connection register and the basic metering register to MECOMS and adapted them to the requirements. That was completed in six months, and we then further expanded the metering register. After that initial phase other projects were also started up. The ones attracting most attention are the allocation and reconciliation systems."

The roll-out of the basic functionality therefore went extremely quickly. And Delta and Ferranti were in day-to-day control of it. Both partners followed through the whole process together, always with two project managers and representatives of both organisations in the various project groups. Van Sluijs: "Due to the time pressure and the size of the project, we set up a tight project management together with Ferranti and followed up progress day by day. Naturally, this was also a learning process. The main points for attention in a project of this size are the human aspects. After all, this was a switch to a new method: the traditional departments would have to work quite differently. Both of us learned a great deal from it as regards communication and transparency."

MECOMS was implemented to make a new way of working possible and to start up a change of mentality within the company. In other words, the implementation and integration of the new system had to support both the operating process and the adaptation process. Today about 450 people work with the system. While most of them simply consult the information, around eighty employees are heavy users.

How did Delta’s employees experience the implementation of MECOMS? Ad van Sluijs: "The users are generally very positive about the system. We actually have considerably more users than we had originally envisaged. At first, that led to performance problems, but we overcame these with Ferranti’s help, and while we still have some fine tuning to do we are extremely satisfied."

"Ferranti guided us through this important change process. It’s thanks to their specialist knowledge and the powerful functionalities of MECOMS that we have been able to concentrate on the human aspects."

Of course, that is not the end of the story. A system such as MECOMS is constantly being adapted to take account of the changing legislation and regulations. But Delta has further ambitions too. Van Sluijs: "The organisation still has a substantial wish list of aspects where the system can help them to speed up and improve day-to-day activities."