Andersen Consulting Launches New Enterprise in Utilities Industry Utiligent Prepares Utilities to Compete in Deregulated Environment.MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 27, 1996--Andersen Consulting announced today the launch of Utiligent, a new enterprise in the utilities industry, which will provide the industry with a unique customer service system -- the first to be delivered on a subscription basis via a network. Utiligent will enable utility companies to expand their client base in an open access, retail wheeling environment with fast, flexible pricing, marketing, and customer service capabilities. Utiligent eliminates the complications, risk and expense of owning, operating and maintaining customer systems and/or customer business office services. The Utiligent enterprise provides the first full function customer service system, called Utiligent Customer, delivered completely on client/server technology. No mainframes are used outside of the clients' legacy systems, which enables utilities to realize unprecedented functionality and flexibility. Utiligent Customer is being marketed to electric, gas and water utilities in the US. Additional products and services will follow, and the organization will expand globally as market forces evolve. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Utiligent president, Michael J. Rusinko, "US-based electric and gas utility companies are facing monumental change with the impending im·pend intr.v. im·pend·ed, im·pend·ing, im·pends 1. To be about to occur: Her retirement is impending. 2. deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. of their industries. Customer retention in a newly competitive marketplace is a critical issue. Utiligent significantly improves the customer service function for utilities and enables them to address customer retention in a proactive manner." "The new competitive environment will put severe pressure on prices and margins, and utility companies will need to invest wisely in new systems," said Robert Schulte, Utiligent Vice President of Marketing. "Utilities now have the ability to access a state-of-the-art customer system without having to bear the cost and risk associated with a custom development project. In addition, Utiligent Customer provides the flexible tools that enable utility-specific competitive advantages. No two utility clients would look alike using Utiligent Customer." The system provides for advanced billing functionality that replaces many tasks that must be manually completed today, as well as customer commitment scheduling, customer outage out·age n. 1. A quantity or portion of something lacking after delivery or storage. 2. A temporary suspension of operation, especially of electric power. information, customer-based billing, and point-of-sale telemarketing telemarketing, the practice of selling goods or services to customers by means of the telephone or of surveying consumer preferences in telephone conversations. of energy-related services. Utiligent plans to partner with its clients to provide shared business processes. Utiligent is the industry's only network-based source for customer system applications and operations. Once a utility company's existing legacy systems are interfaced to the Utiligent network, Utiligent Customer is accessed and purchased on a per-transaction basis. While customer functions like billing, customer accounting and market segmentation Market Segmentation A marketing term referring to the aggregating of prospective buyers into groups (segments) that have common needs and will respond similarly to a marketing action. capabilities are accessed through the network, the utility retains strategic functions such as pricing and sole access to their customer database. In addition, client/server hardware eliminates the need for costly mainframe upgrades by providing cost-effective scalability to easily handle increased volumes and new product development. The result: reduced costs, improved customer service levels, and increased market flexibility. While the system currently operates on a private network, Utiligent will eventually begin using the network and services provided by a new joint venture formed by Andersen Consulting See Accenture. and BBN (BBN Technologies, Cambridge, MA, www.bbn.com) A consulting firm that participated in the development of some of the most extensive networks in the world, including ARPANET, which evolved into the Internet. It was founded in 1948 as a consulting service in acoustics by Dr. Corporation. On June 18, the two companies announced the formation of the JV to establish a business "utility" that companies can plug into and quickly begin conducting electronic commerce and other business operations Business operations are those activities involved in the running of a business for the purpose of producing value for the stakeholders. Compare business processes. The outcome of business operations is the harvesting of value from assets over the Internet. Built upon open Internet standards See Internet Engineering Task Force. , server-based business process architectures, and object-oriented computer languages such as Java, the venture's services will provide: - An electronic suite of essential business processes such as billing and order processing; - Data operations centers delivering service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; - And, a secure network infrastructure with support for multiple tiers of privacy, performance and availability. Utiligent was created based upon a system that was recently installed at Northern States Power (NSP (1) (Network Service Provider) An organization that provides a high-speed Internet backbone to ISPs and other service providers. Sprint, MCI and UUNET are examples of NSPs. See Internet backbones. ), a Minneapolis-based utility company that serves more than 1.4 million electric customers and about 400,000 natural gas customers. NSP selected Andersen Consulting because of the rich functionality of its customer service system, the open distributed application An application made up of distinct components running in separate runtime environments, usually on different platforms connected via a network. Typical distributed applications architecture, guaranteed delivery, and Andersen Consulting's depth of expertise. Andersen Consulting's Utilities Industry practice consists of more than 2,500 professionals assisting clients with strategy development, benchmarking and the application of Best Practices, reengineering and change management. Working on more than 175 projects annually, the practice provides global expertise in consumer services Consumer Services refers to the formulation, deformulation, technical consulting and testing of most consumer products, such as food, herbs, beverages, vitamins, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, hair products, household cleaners, [paints, plastics, metals, waxes, coatings, minerals, ; energy delivery; energy management; marketing and trading; power generation and production; corporate services Activities that combine or consolidate certain enterprise-wide needed support services, provided based on specialized knowledge, best practices, and technology to serve internal (and sometimes external) customers and business partners. ; and organizational transformation/thought leadership. Andersen Consulting is a $4.22 billion global management and technology consulting organization whose mission is to help its clients change to be more successful. The organization works with clients from a wide range of industries to link their people, processes and technologies to their strategies. Andersen Consulting has more than 38,000 persons in 47 countries. CONTACT: Timothy B. Blair Andersen Consulting 312/507-5133 timothy.b.blair@ac.com or David V. Moon Andersen Consulting 312/507-2375 david.v.moon@ac.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion