Utilities suffer IT integration woes

NEWS An inability to integrate IT systems is holding utilities back from competing outside the domestic market, according to IT services group, CMG. A survey of 50 UK utility companies showed that 33 per cent of firms cited an inability to interconnect IT systems such as billing and customer service as a barrier between expansion into global markets. The research, entitled 'Exploiting the Deregulating UK power Industry and Beyond: Challenges, Opportunities and Threats', claimed that as competition increases, it is getting harder for utilities to retain or expand their customer bases. Utilities are also failing to exploit emerging technologies such as call centres and ecommerce. Only 54 per cent of respondents use call centres to target customers with marketing material, while only 33 per cent use the Internet. However 92 per cent said they have plans to use the Web by 2001. Alan Butterworth, MD of CMG's utilities division, claimed the utilities industry is ready for growth providing IT systems are put in place to support it. "In the last couple of years, because of deregulation, it has only just dawned on the utilities that they need to interface with customers. Before this, they were monopolies in their own area and didn't need to," he said. Butterworth claimed that by "harnessing" IT, companies can integrate stand-alone systems to offer a better service to customers. "In the past, they have bought stand-alone systems and cost-justified that, but now they are faced with integrating these systems to target customers."