CONTACT INFORMATION

BEND, OR., June 29, 2000 - Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) has contracted with Orcom Solutions to Upgrade its current Orcom customer care and billing infrastructure with Orcom’s deregulation-ready Enterprise Customer Information System (E-CIS). This will give the utility the capability to Handle complex billing transactions in the new era of electric deregulation.

Pasadena Water and Power serves more than 64,000 customers in southern California. Its contract with Orcom for the E-CIS upgrade was approved by the Pasadena City Council May 15 as a result of Orcom submitting a competitive bid to supply PWP with a state-of-the-art CIS.

"Orcom’s E-CIS offers PWP a number of applications tailored specifically for California’s deregulated environment which provide the needed functionality for us to compete in the new marketplace" said Donald Pappe, Executive Director of Customer Care Services. "In addition, we had been very satisfied with Orcom’s Classic CIS. The competitive price along with the E-CIS features made Orcom a clear choice."

For clients like the City of Pasadena operating in deregulated markets, Orcom configures E-CIS with its Deregulation Transaction Gateway, which manages the complex transaction exchange process among utility and energy service trading partners with incompatible computer systems. E-CIS and DTG work together to automate manual billing and customer care processes, ensure data reliability and consistency, identify errors and exceptions and validate transactions against various states’ regulations and business rules.

The modules within E-CIS also work to accommodate operations within deregulated markets. For example, a billing module supports unbundled, consolidated and dual billing, as well as billing for multiple services on a single statement. For marketing, particularly in competitive markets like California, the billing module also allows companies to tailor individual or groups of bills with special messages, product and service promotions, and usage history graphs.

The E-CIS payment processing module adapts to different trading partners’ accounting requirements to facilitate additional product and service offerings. This E-CIS module also tracks accounts receivable distributions to other service providers to ensure regulatory compliance and accurate payment allocations.

"Orcom Solutions has a 24-year history of building strong, long-lasting partnerships with our clients. We are very pleased to Continue working with Pasadena Water and Power to help them keep pace with rapid changes in the utility industry and to achieve their long-term business objectives," said Orcom President Drew Child.

About Orcom Solutions
Orcom Solutions, Inc., is the premier Application Service Provider (ASP) of billing and customer care solutions, systems integration and outsourcing services to the utility and energy industry. With over 1.2 million outsourced bills, Orcom is the largest ASP for utility and energy bills in the industry. Headquartered in Bend, Oregon, with an office in Denver, Colorado, and a service delivery facility in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Orcom currently has more than 500 employees. Orcom is a LiveWire Utilities company. LiveWire is a diversified software and Internet company focused on business-to-business and mission critical software products and services for media, telecom, utility and Internet companies.

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