Essential Energy has laid out the details of a massive technology refresh, worth nearly $200 million in today’s dollars, that it plans to commence in 2024.
The energy company’s plans were filed with the Australian Energy Regulator, as part of its 2024-2029 regulatory proposal, which presents arguments to support its tariff proposals for those five years.
The program of works covers CRM, metering and billing systems; payroll; advanced distribution management system (ADMS); spatial network management system; mobile workforce management system; and cyber security.
Its ICT business plan explains that Essential Energy’s current regulatory period has already seen significant investments, including replacing its ERP and asset management systems with cloud-hosted Oracle systems, enhancing cyber security (partly driven by Security of Critical Infrastructure Act compliance), upgrading its distribution management system, and renewing its data capability.
The completed ERP replacement saw a Peoplesoft system retired, but a payroll migration to the cloud was delayed for ATO compliance reasons, so a second Peoplesoft system remains in place, to be replaced in the 2024-2029 period.
“In the coming [five years] we will build on the solid foundations of renewed core systems, particularly including the Oracle Cloud ERP and EAM [enterprise asset management], with a program focused on sustainability,” the utility said in its ICT business plan.
Network of the future
The plan puts two initiatives at the top of the list: a CRM upgrade, and what Essential Energy calls the “Network of the Future”.
Essential Energy said that in 2021 and 2022, it conducted extensive consultations to create a customer strategy, which it said informed its CRM system plans.
The regulatory proposal states that in the 2024-2029 period, it will implement a single CRM system.
“The CRM initiative will ensure all customer interactions are recorded in one system, ensuring customers don’t have to ‘tell us twice’,” the proposal states.
“It will also deliver an easy-to-use online portal, enabling customers to view and maintain their contact notification details, and to track service orders and jobs.”
The new CRM will also integrate with market systems “to ensure consistency with the energy market information managed together with retailers (ie. NEM standing data)”, and it will provide an online portal for residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
Enabling capabilities Essential Energy wants in the future, CRM will also require considerable work on its meter and market systems, some of which stretch back 20 years.