BearingPoint Announces Significant Contract to Overhaul Utility's Billing and Collections

BearingPoint, Inc., one of the world’s largest management and technology consulting firms, today announced that the company has been awarded a contract by Florida-based utilities company JEA, the eighth-largest community-owned electric utility in the United States, to upgrade and expand its Customer Information System platform. As of July 2006, JEA has engaged BearingPoint to lead a comprehensive analysis of the current Customer Information System and recommend innovative technology changes and upgrades to implement a new Customer Care and Billing Platform. The Customer Information System is responsible for billing, customer management, credit and collections, field orders (related to service requests), meter inventory and meter read data.

Under the terms of the eighteen-month contract, BearingPoint will upgrade the current PeopleSoft-based product to the Customer Care and Billing Application that will support updated versions of the database and operating system platform and reduce the cost of future upgrades. Further, as the project is expected to have no effect on the current functionality of JEA’s existing system, JEA’s customers should experience little or no impact during the duration of the project.

The JEA electric system currently serves more than 400,000 customers in Jacksonville, Florida and parts of three adjacent counties. JEA’s water system serves more than 290,000 water customers and 230,000 sewer customers, or more than 80 percent of all water and sewer utility customers in the Jacksonville, Florida service area. Independent of this engagement, BearingPoint has worked with JEA on 10 other projects over the past 6 years.

“BearingPoint’s proven depth of expertise in the global utilities sector, as well as our world class skill set in delivering innovative consulting services to clients, were integral in securing this engagement with JEA,” said Phillip Daniele, a Managing Director in the BearingPoint Utilities practice. “While we’ve worked on a number of projects with JEA, we’re very excited about this project as it demonstrates our unique ability to provide seamless integration of performance-enhancing solutions, such as upgrading IT applications, with little-to-no direct impact on our client’s end customer.”

“For more than a decade, JEA has been among the lowest cost utility providers in the Southeast U.S. while providing high quality electric, water and sewer services to our customers,” said Bruce Dugan, the project leader for the system upgrade. “To minimize the threat to maintaining this performance for our customers represented by the risks inherent in installing a customer information and billing system at an integrated utility, we hired BearingPoint, an experienced systems integrator for this project. We expect the successful implementation of our new CIS to improve JEA’s financial performance, customer service and employee productivity.”

BearingPoint provides a wide range of management and technology consulting services to clients around the world including strategy, system implementation, staff augmentation, offshore services, business case development, and process improvement support. In utilities, BearingPoint provides solutions for its clients’ most pressing issues, such as integration of consolidating utilities, upgrading IT applications to supported versions, and maintenance optimization.