IssueAlert Emerging Technologies ~
August, 2003
Providing Technology
Agnostic Customer Care
By Jon T. Brock, Chief Operating Officer, UtiliPoint
I recently had the distinct pleasure to sit down and visit
with a very busy Guerry Waters, Chief Technology Officer and
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for SPL WorldGroup,
at the company headquarters in Morristown, NJ. Waters has more
than 30 years experience in global information technology strategy,
organization, architecture, and business-driven IT solutions.
Prior to joining SPL in November of 2000, Mr. Waters was Vice
President of Energy Information Strategy at META Group, where
he focused on customer management and alignment of the information
technology function with the energy lines of business. I was
very pleased to get dedicated time with Guerry to discuss the
latest at SPL.
History of SPL
Prior to my personal visit with Waters, I had a briefing
at the CIS Conference with Waters and SPL founding member and
chairman of the board, Trevor Winer. Winer explained to me the
history of the company. SPL WorldGroup was originally formed
in 1968 in Johannesburg, South Africa as a software development
shop. It consisted of scientists that solved problems by custom
programming services. It was by no means focused solely on the
utility industry. The main motivation of the founders of SPL
was to create a "different kind of software company,"
one in which ideas could flow quickly and freely from customers
and employees and have a fast impact on product development.
This became SPL's unique culture. Over the years, spurred by
the entrepreneurial sense of adventure, independent "replicas"
of SPL were created in Israel (1977), Australia (1978), United
States (1982) and South East Asia (1984). All of those SPLs,
while independent, were in the same business of providing software
products and solutions and more importantly, shared the same
SPL culture.
In l994, these entrepreneurs came together to explore the idea
of once again becoming a single global entity. It was clear
that joining forces would create an immediate opportunity to
share investment and expertise in worldwide markets. In doing
so, SPL could add value to customers, shareholders and staff.
So all of the SPLs were merged together to take on a new global
dimension; thus the current SPL WorldGroup was born, with headquarters
in the U.S.
Also in the same time frame, the SPL software group focused
its attention on a problem that a North American utility was
having. The year was 1994, the utility was Minnesota Power,
and the problem was its customer information system (CIS) and
billing system. The resulting application became the first generation
of SPL's CIS, known as CIS Plus.
Existing Offering
The original CIS Plus has undergone several revisions
and has actually been re-written into what is today known as
CorDaptix. The effort began in 1998 with a team of fifteen top
SPL software engineers being assembled to re-build the core
product line. After nine months of being “locked away”,
they emerged with the first version. In 1999, it took another
nine months to design a browser front-end for their new creation.
The CorDaptix product line had to be refined, tested, and improved.
Once complete in 2001, it was flexible, scalable, functional,
and regulatory compliant with regulated or deregulated environments.
PeopleSoft has formed an alliance with SPL to market a PeopleTools
version of the CIS.
Technology-Agnostic
A key area that Waters stressed was the fact that SPL
is technology platform agnostic. SPL currently has versions
of its software running on multiple platforms (i.e. IBM, Sun,
Microsoft, and HP) on various databases (i.e. DB2, Oracle).
SPL expects to announce support of the IBM UDB under UNIX in
the near future. While SPL has not had a CorDaptix client or
prospect drive it to support SQL-Server, SQL-Server is already
a supported database for the PeopleSoft CIS product SPL provides
via its alliance with PeopleSoft. The PeopleSoft version of
the CIS will soon run under Linux also, according to Waters.
SPL is also currently working on what it calls the “weekend
upgrade.” This technology ultimately will allow a utility
to upgrade from an older version of the CorDaptix software to
a newer version over the weekend or less. SPL recently proved
this capability in some upgrades it performed with its customers
at Rappahannock and TXU. Waters is confident that a new process
for upgrading will emerge as a key market differentiator for
SPL as it continues to refine and improve the upgrade process.
A companion effort SPL has underway is to make a significant
reduction in the time and cost to implement its products through
the use of sophisticated configuration and data management tools,
and further support for Web Services integration standards.
Functionality Trends
According to Waters, while there has not been a great
demand for generalized sales and marketing functionality, SPL
customers have experienced a growing need for a practical version
of CRM. SPL listened to its clients and responded with several
new “practical CRM” functions. For example, its
campaign management capability lets clients offer and match
products, services, and discount to targeted sets of customers,
then enroll customers who sign up, all in one integrated process.
This CRM type of functionality is usable by both energy retailers
and regulated utilities.
In a previous meeting with SPL, rates were a high priority
at utilities. With market turmoil biting at the heels of just
about every utility, rates are being impacted. What used to
be changed once every decade is getting changed every year in
some cases. SPL provides a quick rate-change feature that allows
a user to design, change, test, and implement a rate for thousands
of customers in less than a day. This same functionality is
used for other purposes such as testing changes in configuration
parameters to determine how to obtain the best results when
there is a change in a business process or policy without affecting
the production environment.
One thing I noted while conversing with Waters was the fact
that SPL listens to its customers. Before embarking on the next
version of CorDaptix, the company interviews its clients and
asks them what they need. The answers form the basis for the
next release of the software. Customers are the reason that,
over the past two releases of CorDaptix, the company has expanded
archiving and built out its commercial and industrial (C&I)
module to include a robust set of complex billing functions.
The product also contains an Open Market Interchange that facilitates
information flow among companies—useful for exchanging
data with suppliers in a competitive environment and with outsourcers
in both competitive and regulated markets. Waters sees increasing
use in the call center for products like SPL's Business Process
Assistant, which supports customer service reps performing complex
tasks. The latest release of CorDaptix also includes various
tools to improve upgradeability, configuration, and implementation
time and cost.
Listening to customers is one aspect of success. The other
is listening to the marketplace. Current feedback from the marketplace
is that utilities want faster, low-cost implementations. The
fact that a CIS implementation today is like pulling teeth and
has a high probability of missing targets is prohibiting some
of the larger utilities from embarking on a customer system
replacement. Some vendors are beginning to develop ways to shorten
the implementation cycles and increase the chance of a successful
project via new technology. SPL is one of those vendors that
have chosen to respond to this market need.
It is clear that SPL continues to listen to its customers and
the marketplace while investing in improving it products and
services despite a North American market that has been in the
doldrums in as far as interest in acquiring new technology.
This should position SPL well for longer-term success as the
customer care market begins to return.
