System fits the bill for energy giant

By ADAM GIFFORD

New Zealand-developed utility billing software Gentrack has beaten off several challenges to remain the favoured commercial and industrial billing system for Origin Energy, Australia's second-largest energy company.

Gentrack is made by Talgentra, the New Zealand-based subsidiary of Britain's Sanderson Group. It has changed its name from Sanderson Computing to reflect its two main products, Gentrack and the Tallyman credit management system.

Origin is an important customer for Talgentra, as it seeks to expand the market for its software overseas. Almost all New Zealand electricity retailers use Gentrack billing.

Talgentra manager Andrew Wereszczynski said Origin, formerly Boral Energy, bought Gentrack in the late 1990s to bill the large commercial gas customers it acquired when it bought Victorian gas retailer Energy 21.

In early 2001 it bought Powercor, an electricity distribution and retail business serving Melbourne's western suburbs and large parts of Victoria.

"It evaluated the systems in the two companies to see which could bill electricity and gas on the one system. Gentrack came out the best," Wereszczynski said.

Origin also bought the electricity retail business of CitiPower, which included 260,000 residential and small business customers in central Melbourne and about 4000 large commercial and industrial customers on Australia's eastern seaboard.

Gentrack was again evaluated against CitiPower's SAP system and again came up as the preferred option for customers billed on a time-interval basis.

Dennis Barnes, manager of Origin's full retail contestability project, said that by bringing large customers off four separate systems on to Gentrack and billing multiple fuels on a single system, Origin expects large economies of scale.

Gentrack was chosen for its processing speed and flexibility in dealing with complex customer requirements.

Barnes said a large customer's electricity meter could be read every half hour with different tariffs applied, giving a complex bill.

Customers wanted accurate and timely power usage reports in electronic form so they could easily track and manage their consumption.

Wereszczynski said while only a small percentage of Origin's 2 million customers were commercial and industrial users, they accounted for more than $500 million of the company's revenue.

Gentrack will also be putting its hand up when Origin looks for a single billing system for its residential customers. A recent benchmarking test by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed that, running on an Oracle database, it could handle at least 3 million customers.

Wereszczynski said Talgentra was establishing staff and distribution arrangements in North America and Asia to push sales of Gentrack and Tallyman.

It increased its New Zealand staff by 30 per cent in the past year to 120 and intends to add another 30 or so this year.

While Talgentra's results are not separated, last year the Sanderson Group made a profit of $50 million on revenues of $398 million, its 19th year of profitable growth.

Gentrack