Gasunie

What IT challenges and requirements had to be managed?

• New European regulation required that Gasunie offers a great part of its capacity through a European trading platform. The existing system (SAP IS-U) made it difficult and expensive to accommodate these changes
• Deploy a system which offers business agility and better time to market
• High availability 24/7
• Simplification and standardization
• Integration with Microsoft platform technologies

What were the requirements for the solution?

The preferred solution had to be configurable and easily upgradable because this also influences the total cost of ownership and the future-proof character of the solution. Also, the user interface had to be intuitive and user-friendly. Furthermore, the solution had to be able to cope with the evolutions and regulations in the market.

Why was MECOMS selected? 

The new European regulation on Gas transport and the excessive maintenance costs of their existing environment, made Gasunie decide to look for another business support platform.

After a thorough pre-study end of 2012 driven by Gasunie and Accenture, Gasunie decided to replace SAP IS-U with MECOMS for Contract Management and Billing.
Three important capabilities put MECOMS in front:

1. MECOMS is interfacing with PRISMA, the European Capacity Platform for Shippers, enabling MECOMS to perform a major role in the new capacity auctioning process;
2. MECOMS is much easier to adapt to the new regulation, and
3. the capability of MECOMS to deal with the most complex contracts in the utility industry.

Also the fact that MECOMS is Microsoft’s preferred solution for energy and utilities anywhere in the world and the recognition by industry analysts like Gartner, backed-up the choice for MECOMS.

How did Gasunie experience the MECOMS project implementation? 

This project was done under the supervision of Gasunie together with Accenture/Avanade-Ferranti. “We experienced the ‘Accenture/Avanade-Ferranti’-collaboration as very committed to deliver a high-quality implementation that has met our expectations. There was a tight deadline for delivering the complete system. Existing functionality and the new auction functionality had to be rebuild/re-configured in the new MECOMS system. Furthermore, the communication with all back-end systems had to be delivered. This required great planning and technical skills, both were met in this project. The system went live on the planned date.”

How is MECOMS performing at Gasunie?

MECOMS ensures a high availability and throughput of capacity bookings including the calculation of booked, auction and remaining capacity for 2.000 network points (points on which capacity of gas needs to be reserved) on a daily level. In the near future even on hourly basis. MECOMS proves the stability of its architecture, as it is running smoothly at Gasunie.

What is the main benefit for Gasunie? 

“MECOMS supports us in one of our most critical core processes as Gas Transport Service Operator (TSO).

One of the main reasons for selecting MECOMS is the lower cost-of-ownership we expect for the long run because we have maximized the use of the standard out-of-the-box functionalities when implementing MECOMS.

This represents significant savings for us compared to the initial high maintenance costs because every change represented a custom development.
The main benefit of MECOMS for Gasunie is the lower cost-of-ownership.”

MECOMS is implemented at Gasunie by MECOMS partner Accenture.

Accenture and Avanade act as worldwide MECOMS Partners. Their global delivery capabilities allow them to jointly deliver effective and innovative projects to help utilities lower their cost to
serve and improve customer satisfaction.