THE CHALLENGE

BC Hydro's CIS was built in-house over 27 years ago. An internal team identified system deficiencies and recognized that even with considerable effort the system would still have development restrictions resulting from an outdated platform design. An additional concern was the ability to recruit technical staff to support the legacy system. The existing technical staff were all due to retire within the next five years and recruiting new employees to support old technology platforms was difficult. As they planned for future developments, BC Hydro wanted options that their current systems could not accommodate, such as unbundling some aspects of their bills and being able to provide billing services for joint venture partners.

BC Hydro first approached TMG Consulting in September 1998 when the Director of Customer Service, Veikko Kammonen, commissioned a brief study to examine the status of B.C. Hydro's current CIS as compared to the new breed of Customer Information Systems available and implemented in the marketplace. John Pilling, co-Project Manager for BC Hydro, had come to know Greg Galluzzi as a planning committee member for the CIS Conference. "Greg really has his ear to the ground on what's going on in the industry," said John Pilling. "We could have chosen a larger consulting company to help us, but we believe that Greg had broader experience in utility CIS, and would provide a more unbiased opinion than the big boys."

TMG CONSULTING SERVICES

TMG Consulting was selected to help the utility formulate a CIS/CRM business plan, and assist in a CIS needs assessment and selection effort. Greg Galluzzi led TMG's project team, assisted by senior consultants Mario Bauer and Rose Minton. They worked most closely with the utility's co-project managers, John Pilling and Bahram Gustaspi.

The first phase of the assessment considered:

• Current Environment (What are we doing today?)
• Strategy/Target Environment (What do we want to do?)
• Industry Analysis (How does this compare to industry best practices, costs, etc?)
• GAP Analysis (What is the difference between current and target?)
• Alternative Analysis (What are viable ways to achieve target?)
• Business Analysis (Cost, Benefits, ROI, Risk, Timeframe?)

In brief, the study also explored:

• Analysis of the technologies and linkages between the various BC Hydro systems
• Review of BC Hydro's strategic direction with regard to rate products, marketing, customer retention, billing products and services, payment options, etc.
• Benchmark analysis of existing CIS development projects being undertaken in other utilities with regard to costs, rationale for project and timelines for completion.

The CIS Review report concluded with the recommendation that BC Hydro execute a project to conduct a full review of CIS with the goal of recommending the most effective approach to CIS Renewal. This effort and the resulting CIS Design Blueprint stemmed from the recommendation.

The CIS Design Blueprint goals were:

• To document all functional and technical requirements of a Customer Information System.
• To examine all current and planned business processes which are or can be incorporated into a Customer Information System.
• To examine all viable CIS Renewal alternatives.
• To recommend the most effective approach for CIS Renewal.

The CIS Design Blueprint also included rankings by system users of a checklist of over 1,700 potential current and future system features and functionalities. The items were rated from 10 (mandatory) to 5 (required) to 3 (desirable) to 1 (nice to have). TMG Consulting prepared a weighted average analysis of the responses as part of the needs assessment.

TMG Consulting assisted through the drafting of a Request For Proposal and solicitation of system providers. "Posting the RFP to the CIS World site really opened up our procurement process. It may seem like a small thing, but we had to get senior management approval to use this external process in addition to our usual process of posting on the Provincial Government's Purchasing Commission site. But, as a result, we received responses from vendors that we didn't have on our initial lists." said John Pilling. "Plus, at the CIS World site, vendors could register to receive notification of updates and Q&A that they could then download from the site."

RESULTS

More than 30 vendors initially responded, and TMG Consulting helped us prepare evaluation criteria that allowed the utility to shorten the list to twelve. Following demonstrations and reference checks, the list was shortened to six, then four, and then two vendors before a final selection of SAP as the software vendor, and Accenture as the Solution Integrator, was made May 2001.