Empowering Sustainable Energy: Succeeding in competitive smart markets

The heart of central markets
The competitive energy market in Britain has helped us all to enjoy more affordable energy with greater reliability of supply.

With around 50 gas and electricity supply organisations and around two dozen water companies in the UK competing to service some 28 million customers, this country certainly qualifies as competitive.

For our competitive market to operate effectively, a central infrastructure that enables competition to take place is essential. Logica has been at the heart of the design, implementation and operation of Britain’s central energy market infrastructure since 1994. We do the same job for Scotland’s competitive water market. And we’ve settled around £100 billion wholesale electricity trades since the market was privatised.

We achieve this through an in-depth understanding of British market regulation built up over years, through information management and through security, as well as drawing upon our broader expertise in sectors such as telecoms and financial services.

Competing to win
If those credentials aren’t enough to show that we know what it takes to succeed in your competitive market, how about this: we’re responsible for the bulk of ELEXON’s central systems, so wholesale providers can buy, sell and trade electricity for their customers. And we’re not resting on our laurels. In 2009, we fundamentally transformed and improved ELEXON’s services as part of a new five-year contract. But it isn’t just about technology – it’s also about innovative commercial arrangements that incentivise greater value for the companies that use our client’s services throughout the duration of the contract.

But our experience of enabling the successful operation of competitive energy markets isn’t limited to Britain. We’ve also designed and implemented energy central market systems in Australia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United States. Nor, for that matter, is our experience limited to enabling energy markets. In fact, we’re experts in central market systems of all kinds – for example, we created SWIFT for banks that needed a cross-border funds transfer system.

Outsourcing is another area that can create competitive advantage. Outsourcing critical but non-core areas such as HR, payroll, data exchange, applications management, customer relationship management and even billing can reduce overheads and cost to serve. But our ideas for improving your competitive position don’t stop there.

We can put our heads together with you to bring fresh insights to areas as diverse as systems integration, trading and risk management or programme delivery. We can discuss our customer care and billing propositions and demonstrate how the smart office can help you better manage your transactions and relationships with your customers.