British Gas sues Accenture

"Accenture faces a £182 million High Court writ ...”

An IT system that was supposed to make British Gas the darling of consumers nationwide has instead become the focus of a multimillion-pound legal battle.

British Gas had hoped to consign complaints about the business to history, but in the event it was described by watchdogs as being in meltdown and thousands of its customers decided that they had suffered enough and switched to a rival.

Now the origins of the customer service problems a year ago, which caused complaints about Britain's biggest residential energy supplier to rise nearly threefold to record levels, are at the centre of a £182 million High Court writ.

Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, confirmed yesterday that it was suing Accenture, the global consultancy group, about the state-of-the-art IT system.

It claims that the “Project Jupiter” system reduced British Gas's customer billing process to such a mess that the energy supplier had to hire 2,500 extra staff and invest millions more pounds to fix the problems and make it work.

The showdown promises to last for months as each company fights to prove that it was not to blame for inaccurate bills sent to homes across the UK. Complaints to Energywatch, the watchdog, about British Gas hit a record 14,001 in March last year.

Accenture vowed yesterday to fight its corner, stating: “We are confident, based on the facts of the situation, that this claim is baseless and without merit. Centrica is only trying to shift the blame for a situation it created.” Centrica hired Accenture to provide the new billing system seven years ago.
It was to bring together the records of British Gas's 12.5million gas and electricity customers on to one platform capable of handling 250,000 meter readings and 200,000 bills a day.

The £317million fee would come from the £397million of savings that British Gas expected to obtain from the project. Centrica claims that, after a number of glitches, in March 2006 Accenture guaranteed a software upgrade that would work. Centrica argues that, instead, the system continued to struggle and generated a high level of “exceptions” - billing issues that required manual intervention.

Centrica also claims that Accenture failed to provide adequate computer hardware and did not integrate the system properly. The energy supplier formally notified Accenture that it was in breach of contract in February 2007.

A British Gas spokesman said: “An independent analysis of the billing system has concluded that Accenture was responsible for fundamental errors in the design and implementation of the system. British Gas has been left with no option but to pursue legal redress against Accenture.”

In the past year, since British Gas fixed the system itself, complaints to Energywatch about the supplier have fallen 85 per cent, the spokesman said.

Source: Times Online

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A life coach in your pocket

Imagine your life and work so tightly entwined you lose track of the boundaries and ... imagine a digital device that keeps track of your behaviour patterns whatever next? Its ironic to actually call this prototype device a personal coach when in fact the very things it prompts you to do are commonsense. Mmm this is a gadget that works well for medical situations but in everyday life, what are the benefits and at what cost do we want to stop thinking for ourselves?

“Imagine a world where a device in your pocket lets you know whether you are managing your time well, talking too much on a sales call, or getting enough sleep.”

And imagine that device being used to deliver on-the-job learning at the point of need — helping to develop employees by allowing them to set specific goals, then giving them objective measures of whether their behaviour patterns match the goals they've set.

Sounds like science fiction? As is often the case these days, the idea is closer to reality than you think. Accenture Technology Labs has developed a prototype Mobile Personal Services Platform (MPSP), which makes it possible to develop applications that can transform a mobile phone into a customised personal coach.

This platform has been enabled by two technological trends: the dramatic increase in the capabilities of mobile smartphones, and the emergence of small, wearable sensors that can be used with these devices to provide data about a user's body, behaviour and physical environment. Our prototype software uses these technologies to give people personalised feedback and advice on everything from nutrition to the art of conversation.

Beyond the workplace
This technology is still some way from coming to market. But when it does, it will have important implications for workplace training and personal self-improvement. Consider how it could provide the coaching that a diabetic might need on the diet and medication regime needed to manage the disease, and even guide that person to the closest (or cheapest) chemist if their medication is running low. The scenarios for which MPSP will enable content providers to deliver next-generation personal services to mobile phones are as varied as the sections in a book store.

A word in your ear
The Palo Alto labs team has been exploring the possible applications of this technology both in the workplace and beyond. The first prototype coaching module we developed is focused on making people more effective in professional conversations, such as team meetings, sales calls or negotiation sessions. Software running on the phone collects voice streams and location data. Wireless connections send the data from the participant's phone to a server that integrates and analyses the data, fusing information from various devices to create a meaningful picture of the conversation.

The system then matches the observed behaviour against performance goals in near real-time, and makes suggestions about how to better achieve behavioural targets. These suggestions can then be relayed to the user, either on the phone's screen or by whispering advice into the user's headset, depending on the user's preferences.

The prototype also generates more detailed feedback for later review on a computer — meaning that a salesperson could sit down at his PC at the end of the day and review his performance, including getting detailed analyses of trends and correlations across all his meetings. For example, it might show that he was more effective in meetings held early in the day, but tended to drone on or interrupt too much in the afternoon.

Sensitive and omnipresent
The mobile phone has ceased to be just a phone. MPSP is part of the next wave of mobility innovation, which will exploit the mobile device as a means to deliver a wide array of innovative services enabled by its constant presence on your body, and its growing awareness of your physical environment. This will enable companies to serve their customers better, help employees improve their professional effectiveness, and allow consumers to adjust their behaviour to achieve personal objectives.

It will also turn the mobile device — which has evolved into a powerful wearable computer complete with ever more sophisticated wireless sensors — into a new type of service channel, personalised to the immediate context and needs.

With the advent of the new generation of mobile platforms and applications, the challenge now is to explore how this can improve the way we work and live; for example, by enabling people to develop a better understanding of their own behaviour, they can begin to improve their personal and professional effectiveness.

As a result, these services could take human performance enhancement to a new level. Traditional training teaches the right thing to do — and then hopes that the trainee executes it correctly (the "say and pray" technique). In contrast, the personal performance coach can measure behaviour against goals, and then alert the user when the execution is veering off course. The technology will eventually go beyond tracking simple conversation patterns, to helping users see subtler cross-contextual issues. For example, it might help a user realise his behaviour becomes less effective when he skips lunch, or that he interrupts people less after a good night's sleep.

Taking mobility further
We can foresee companies in a wide variety of industries exploiting the enhanced awareness of the body, behaviour and physical environment afforded by these devices, and using it to help their employees improve their personal performance or lifestyles. For example, a healthcare company might offer a service that would help someone detect if they were eating healthily, meeting exercise goals they'd set for themselves or suffering from higher blood pressure than normal, and would then make real-time suggestions to address the problem.

The next step for us is to help content providers develop applications, and to provide the necessary back-end data services.

As technologies such as MPSP mature, they will help companies improve productivity, operate more intelligently and capture new market opportunities. But perhaps their greatest impact will be at the individual level, by helping people to become more effective — whether they are trying to develop into more successful negotiators or enjoy happier, healthier lives.

Source: Alex Kass is a researcher at Accenture Technology Laboratories, California.

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