At the recent PICA meeting in Santa Clara, there was a good session on ecommerce and utilities. Here’s the summary from the program. The actual list of presentations follows.

The Power point presentations themselves are TEMPORARILY available for downloading on line (and I have ecopies). I caught part of the Anderson Consulting presentation, and thought the characterization of the various segments was rather well done.

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http://www.pica99.org/panel-sessions.htm

Panel Session 1: “e-Commerce in Electric Utilities”

Tuesday, May 18th, 2:00 – 5:00
Moderator: E. Dobrowolski, KEMA Consulting

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“Where Do You Go From Here – Preparing for the Future”
Edward P. Meehan, Managing Director, Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc.:
410-454-5525 epmeehan@leggmason.com

With the quickening pace of electric utility deregulation, utility executives are faced with growing challenges on a daily basis. Couple that with the emergence of e-Commerce as a new driver of corporate strategy and the complexity of your business increases geometrically. As regulated utilities look forward, they need to evaluate how to utilize e-Commerce from a defensive basis to reduce costs and streamline operations and from an offensive position to provide superior customer service and develop new business opportunities. One of the challenges today is to understand the strategies being developed by potential competitors and identifying how to bring such competencies in to your organization. We will look at what is developing in this market and raise some focused issues on the new competitors you may be facing.

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“e-Commerce and the Virtual Utility”
Paul Daugherty, Partner, Andersen Consulting &
Brad Holcombe, Partner, Andersen Consulting: 212-708-8279 paul.r.daugherty@ac.com

e-Commerce offers transformational opportunities for Utility companies in both business-business and business-consumer interaction. This topic will discuss the new “virtual” business models that are possible with e-Commerce.

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“Practical Experiences in e-Commerce”
Aaron Daisley-Harrison 425-451-3100 aaron_daisley-harrison@dmr.ca &
Lloyd Robinson, DMR Consulting 206-521-2178 lloyd_robinson@msn.com

Orchestrating a successful e-Commerce project involves all of the classic issues that have faced IT with the added complexity of needing to stitch together software and platforms that were never conceived to work cooperatively. Experiences from actual projects will be presented and the many pitfalls along the road to attaining the brass ring will be pointed out.

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“TransaXions and the Internet: E-Commerce for Energy”
Adam E. C. Yeh, Development Manager, Connext:
206-521-2302 yeha@connext.com

Whether itis delivering reports, authorizing payments, collecting usage information or scanning records, Internet based E-Commerce provides the most cost effective way for business-to-business and business-to-customer transactions. Both Energy Service providers and their customers should be looking at this new form of interaction and business model to evaluate their bottom line savings. Technical issues for deploying Internet technology and E-Commerce solutions in the energy industry, especially in the areas of billing, customer metering and energy transactions will be presented. Emphasis will be on the system architecture and the Graphic User Interface.

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“Providing Deregulation Benefits to Non-Traditional Players through the Internet”
Frank Koza, General Manager, UniGrid, LLC:
215-841-5240 fkoza@peco-energy.com

UniGrid is an Internet based system that is designed to provide the benefits of the newly deregulated energy industry to the Commercial & Industrial sector. The concepts behind UniGrid will be presented with emphasis on the potential uses through the Internet. Leveraging technology from other industries to accomplish this goal will be highlighted.

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“Energydirect.com: The Internet Business Strategy for the 21st Century Utility”
Will Knight, Director, Online Business wrknight@southernco.com 404-506-4956
& Martha Driscoll, C&I Online Business Development 404-506-2317 madrisco@southernco.com

Why companies should view customer access as a value-creating asset. Leveraging the Internet as a customer acquisition and retention tool in a competitive marketplace.

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http://www.pica99.org/panel_presentations.htm
(Powerpoint presentations)

Panel Session #1 — Tuesday, May 18th, 2:00 P.M.
e-Commerce for the Power Industry

Where Do You Go From Here – Preparing for the Future
Edwin P. Meehan, Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc.

eCommerce: The Virtual Utility
Paul R. Daugherty, Andersen Consulting

e-Business
Lloyd Robinson, Aaron Daisley-Harrison, DMR Consulting

Transactions and Internet E-Commerce for Energy
Adam Yeh, Microsoft Corporation

Developing an Internet Business Strategy for the 21st Century Utility
Martha Driscoll, Will Knight, Southern Company

e-Commerce for Electricty
Edward G. Cazalet, CEO Automated Power Exchange, Inc.