EDP Commercial & Industrial Customer Billing: A Case Study

Introduction

As EDP reaches the end of its three-year migration to CC&B, it is timely to look at why EDP selected Oracle and whether this heralds a new dynamic in the European utility billing market.

Scope

*Competition among European billing systems providers

*Oracle's recent win at EDP

Highlights

While SAP has traditionally dominated the European utility billing market, through acquisitions, Oracle has developed scale in Europe that brings a credible competitor to the market, which was previously absent.

Oracle won the EDP contract due to a perceived technological advantage in the creation of contracts and the bringing together of back-office and front-office processes for use by a single account manager.

Ovum believes that no billing engine supports all of the new business processes introduced by smart meter and smart grid investments, and that this area will be where vendors will achieve competitive differentiation in the future.

Reasons to Purchase

*Understand how SAP came to dominate the European utility billing market

*Learn how Oracle's technical functionality won the contract at EDP


Report Highlights

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Summary 1
Catalyst 1
Ovum view 1
Key messages 2
The European utility billing space is dominated by SAP IS-U 3
SAP IS-U has an enviable collection of tier one utility clients across Western Europe and North America 3
SAP benefits from utilities' conservatism and an historical lack of credible competition 4
Through acquisitions, Oracle has developed a portfolio of utility-specific business applications that now rivals SAP's 5
WITH SIGNIFICANT WINS IN MULTIPLE UTILITIES IN EUROPE, ORACLE IS BECOMING A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO SAP IN EUROPE 6
EDP's C&I billing was previously done over multiple, disparate legacy systems 6
EDP's selection criteria focused on the operational requirements of its new pan-Iberian C&I business 6
Oracle's flexibility in contract design and account management won EDP over 7
Accenture was chosen as the systems integrator over EDP's long-standing partner Logica 7
oracle must maintain PRODUCT innovation to stop the sap juggernaut 8
This is the second major utility in Europe running IS-U to select Oracle CC&B for C&I 8
C&I billing is likely to be the battleground billing vendors choose when fighting SAP's dominance in Europe 9
The future energy market will require substantial innovation in residential billing 10
Recommendations 10
There are now credible options to SAP IS-U in Europe 10
Make sure that any compliance issues are included in the original blueprint 10
Ensure that the vendor can accommodate future business models 11
Appendix 11
Further reading 11
Methodology 11
Author 11
Ovum Consulting 11
Disclaimer 12

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