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St Clements

St Clements and Parity switch on strong support for the UK electricity industry

The UK electricity industry has been through a succession of rapid and radical changes and consistently requires strong support from quality Information Technology applications.

After privatisation and the disbanding of the Central Electricity Generating Board, regional electricity authorities required an organisation to manage their input into the strategic evolution in electricity trading and associated requirement for supporting Information Systems. Together they set up St Clements (www.st-clements.co.uk) to provide those vital services.

Regional electricity companies jointly-fund St Clements and rely upon the leading software solutions provider to make certain the industry's primary validation application, the Energy Contracts Management System (ECMS) is regularly updated to support the latest legislative changes and working practices.

Back in October 1993 Parity successfully won a contract worth more than half a million pounds to help St. Clements enhance ECMS for a further stage of deregulation. The contract was won in fierce competition from major software organisations. This complex project was successfully delivered on time and within budget and subsequently Parity won the support contract for ECMS which is on-going.

ECMS is a large system with more than 1000 programs. The platform is DEC Alpha with a VMS operating system. St Clements acts as the system provider to the regional electricity companies and does not run the application itself. The system runs on each regional electricity company site and St Clements coordinates first line support which is backed up by the Parity team. Frank Brady, client manager for Parity Business Solutions (www.parity.net/solutions/) says the system is currently text-based but points out that there are plans afoot to move to a GUI version soon. It is also expected that St Clements will move to a Unix platform for increased portability in full consultation with the users of the system.

Since October 1993 Parity has successfully completed business for St Clements which has been worth about £30million. Brady says,

'Over the period of our working relationship with St Clements there have been several changes in the St Clements internal management structure yet each time St Clements management has chosen to maintain the Parity support relationship due to its proven record of successfully delivering the right quality and quantity of skills at the right time. Indeed over such a long relationship, our personnel have inevitably changed as well. The strength of our relationship is as much embodied in a marriage of approach and process as it is in individual skills'

He explains that during the course of the relationship with St Clements, Parity has provided a range of services over and above applications management and support and maintenance.

'These services are provided proactively and they seek to improve efficiencies wherever possible. We aim to effectively anticipate any problems before they occur.'

These additional services include project management, business analysis, systems analysis, technical authoring, training, user acceptance and system testing support.

Brady says:

'The range of services provided and the peaks and troughs in resource demands of the application management contract has presented a major challenge to the flexibility, breadth and depth of our resource pool but it has been a challenge that we have successfully managed as indicated by the duration of the contract.'

He points out that infrastructure support and development is resourced out of Parity's Hemel Hempstead office and software fixes with the application management services run from Parity's development centre in Antrim via communications links to the client's server.

Parity's support team has varied depending on the client's workload. The core service contract is based on the provision of three full time equivalents - about 600 man days per annum which is drawn from a pool of people who deliver support under the various required service categories.

Whenever important major enhancements to St Clements systems are required, the core Parity Business Solutions team is quickly supplemented with designers and developers for the duration of specific projects. Typically these enhancement projects last from three to six months, Brady says. Systems are fully tested in-house prior to the roll-out of the system to each of the individual regional electricity companies.
Parity Business Solutions designs, builds and operates complete systems which cover a wide variety of different business functions.

Always focusing on maximising investment returns, Parity's expert consultants specialise in interactive commerce, customer relationship security and applications management.

Chris Wright, Director of Information Systems for St Clements, says,

'Parity and St Clements have worked together since 1993 providing quality business analysis, systems development, applications management and help desk support services. We have consistently found Parity to be a responsive, flexible and reliable service partner. Whilst their technical skills are important to us, the key to the value they bring is the investment made in understanding our business and the delivery of systems and services that reflect that knowledge. Working with Parity, St. Clements continues to play a key role in the design, enhancement and implementation of electricity trading arrangements throughout the UK.'

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