MECOMS Newsletter July 2009
Below you can see an archived copy of our newsletter.
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July 2009 |
MECOMS Newsletter |
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MECOMS, the Reference ERP CRM Solution to Empower Energy, Water and Utility Companies
A lot is happening in the Energy & Utilities market and we are proud to be a part of this.
Three new partners signed up namely Logica Denmark, Barbagli Italy and Columbus IT Saudi Arabia.
From a product perspective we are excited about our new release, the strategy and vision and the inclusion of Ferranti as a new player in the Gartner magic quadrant. Our relationship with Microsoft is further tightened displaying great benchmarking results and a joined market approach in India.
I had a lot of exciting discussions at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans and would like to invite you to Metering Europe which takes place in Barcelona (6-8 October).
Enjoy Reading,
Patrick van Damme
Business Development Manager
Contact us at info@mecoms.com
Visit us www.mecoms.com |
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Columbus IT signs Tawzea |
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Tawzea, a water company in Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia has chosen to implement MECOMS through our partner Columbus IT Middle-East. The system will handle the customer care and billing processes of Tawzea which is just starting up their business.
One of the main reasons for choosing MECOMS® as a solution was the availability of best practices and a blueprint for the water market that helps them in starting and executing their business in Saudi-Arabia.
About Tawzea
Tawzea (www.tawzea.com) distributes and sells potable and recycled water and manages waste for 2000 companies in three industrial cities around Riyadh, Jeddah en Quassim.
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Essent Belgium chooses MECOMS for Microsoft Dynamics AX |
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Ferranti has been chosen to implement the new B2C Business Platform for Essent based on MECOMS for Dynamics™ AX.
Included in this project are the Contracting and Switching, Customer Service and CRM, Billing, Credit Management, Accounting and Reporting processes. The project goals tie in with Essent's ambitions as an organization to focus on the customer, to aim for a “First contact resolution” in every customer contact, to empower employees by providing them with the right tools and this with minimal complexity to work cost-efficiently.
About Essent Belgium
Essent (www.essent.be) has been operating in the Belgian energy market since 2001 as an official electricity and gas provider in the three Belgian regions (Flanders, Wallonia and with a turnover of 315 million euros in 2008 and a workforce of 130 employees.
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Ferranti included in the 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant report |
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Ferranti and MECOMS have been included in the new Magic Quadrant for Utilities Customer Information Systems for 2009. This report, aimed at buyers of customer care & billing systems in the energy and utilities industry, compares and maps products of different vendors.
Ferranti is proud to be mentioned as an innovative solution provider, focused on international expansion. Please contact Gartner for a copy of the full report.
http://www.gartner.com
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New MECOMS 2009 released |
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In May, Ferranti released the new version of MECOMS release, dubbed ‘MECOMS 2009’ is fully compatible with Microsoft Dynamics™ AX 2009. MECOMS 2009 has a number of improvements and new features in the areas of Meter Data Management, Market Interaction and Customer Care & Billing further leveraging the best practices embedded in the product and extending the value of market blueprints.
The key areas of the release are focused around:
Usability
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In CRM, MECOMS® now provides the users with an improved 360° view of all activities and information related to a customer, connection, or meter and improvements have been made in the area of customer ticket logging. These dashboard views give an easy presentation of all data and empower the front office employee to be more productive.
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Customer interaction has been further improved allowing easier communication with the customer and better follow up providing a solid fit with customer support and related business processes.
Functionality Richness
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The MECOMS® Credit Management functionality has been improved further increasing the productivity of the credit management office by adding new business matching rules.
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Billing improvements include new business rules to handle complex multi site, multi contract elements also extending the invoice bundling capabilities of MECOMS and introducing new invoice communication methods and reports.
These are just a few of the new features in MECOMS® 2009. Please contact Ferranti or your local partner for more information on the new MECOMS® 2009 release.
In the next newsletter some exciting announcements will be done on smart metering and other strategic roadmap items for the MECOMS® product.
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Ferranti signs three new MECOMS Partner Agreements |
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In the past few months, Ferranti has signed partner agreements with three new partners in Denmark, Italy and the Middle East to sell, implement, and support MECOMS.
Ferranti signed a partner agreement with the local division of Logica, Logica Denmark. The Logica group is a leading IT and business services company, employing 40,000 people. It provides business consulting, systems integration, and IT and business process outsourcing services. Logica works closely with its customers to release their potential - enabling change that increases their efficiency, accelerates growth and manages risk. It applies its deep industry knowledge, technical excellence and global delivery expertise to help its customers build leadership positions in their markets. Logica is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and Euronext (Amsterdam) (LSE: LOG; Euronext: LOG). More information is available at www.logica.dk.
Barbagli is Ferranti’s new partner in Italy. Barbagli is an Italian leading company specialized in metering and billing activities, providing solutions for the reading, management and monitoring of water, gas, electric energy, and heat meters. Barbagli offers a wide selection of services and cutting edge technologies for Utilities and building managers, such as meter reading software and services, technical activities, billing services, AMR technologies for heat, water and gas meters. See www.barbagli.it for more information.
Columbus IT Middle East has signed a VAR agreement to be Ferranti’s MECOMS partner in the GCC region, including Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Oman en Yemen. Columbus found the way to the New World. Columbus IT found the way to help make companies become more efficient and more profitable. As the discoverer said, it's easy to guide the way once you know how and Columbus IT knows how to do it. Their project leaders and consultants are IT experts as well as former employees in the industry with expertise in the utility sector. See www.columbusit.ae for more information.
Other MECOMS Partners...
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Ferranti opens Ferranti India office |
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On July 1, Ferranti opened an office in India to support local partners in selling, implementing and supporting MECOMS in the Indian Energy market.
Ferranti is working with Microsoft to provide solutions for APDRP (Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme). APDRP is a US $12billion federal project aimed at modernizing and IT-enabling India’s entire distribution infrastructure by reforming and improving the existing infrastructure and supporting systems.
Together, Microsoft and Ferranti will work with local system integrators to position for this purpose their integrated end-to-end software solution based on Microsoft Dynamics™ AX and MECOMS.
See http://www.mecoms.in for more information.
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Microsoft and Ferranti release performance benchmark report for MECOMS |
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Ferranti and Microsoft have co-authored a MECOMS® performance benchmark report based on extensive performance tests executed in Microsoft’s lab in Munich.
The benchmark series have focused on transaction load and data generation, and billing performance runs.
From this first run of benchmark tests it can be concluded that MECOMS® is capable of handling large transaction volumes in processing key Energy & Utility data in the system such as customers, configurations, metering data and contractual data. MECOMS® can scale out processes and run key utility processes in parallel without hampering user activity on the system. Also processes can scale out related to the associated hardware. The MECOMS® Solution can scale up to +15 million connections and meet the Meta Group benchmark requirements providing the right hardware is in place.
Please contact Ferranti or your local partner for more information or to obtain a copy of this benchmark report.
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Events - Metering Europe - Barcelona, 6-9 October 2009 |
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Europe's leading Metering, Billing/CRM conference and exhibition is back for its 11th year!
Changes in the metering industry are happening so fast that most industry observers are having difficulty keeping up with the rapid evolution. Over the past months, the US, China and some European countries announced massive investments in smart metering and smart grids. Smart metering has become a worldwide phenomenon.
Against this background, Metering, Billing/CRM Europe is organized to provide a forum which discusses the current industry challenges and the way forward. Industry experts from around the world will come together and discuss the latest issues in the field.
Meet Ferranti Computer Systems and discover MECOMS at our booth n° 357
Conference Focus – Learn more from global metering projects
To prepare your business for a smart meter roll-out, it is paramount to learn from the experience of utilities already running a smart metering project. Several projects will be showcased and questions to be addressed include:
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What have been the drivers behind the projects?
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What technologies have been chosen, why and how have they chosen them?
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Which technology has worked best and which has provided the most challenges?
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What are the lessons learned/learnt?
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What are the next decision points to progress and how will they be addressed?
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What is the ROI?
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How move to smart grid management?
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How did the organization structure and processes change?
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