Supply Customer Relationship Management and Billing system

Thames Water Utilities Limited
Procurement Support Centre – 3rd Floor East, C/O Mail Room, Rose Kiln Court
RG2 0BY Reading
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail: procurement.support.centre@thameswater.co.uk

Further information can be obtained from: The above mentioned contact point(s)

Specifications and additional documents (including documents for a dynamic purchasing system) can be obtained from: The above mentioned contact point(s)

Tenders or requests to participate must be sent to: The above mentioned contact point(s)

Water

The contracting entity is purchasing on behalf of other contracting entities: no

FA1226 Customer Relationship Management and Billing system (Non-household and wholesale).

Supplies
Purchase
Main site or location of works, place of delivery or of performance: Whole of Thames Water region.
NUTS code

The notice involves the establishment of a framework agreement

Framework agreement with several operators
maximum number of participants to the framework agreement envisaged: 5

Duration of the framework agreement

Duration in months: 60

From 1.4.2017, non-household customers in England will have the ability to choose their water supplier and sewerage services provider. TW non-household retail and wholesale business functions will therefore be participants in the new competitive non-household water market each with their own set of market obligations and commercial requirements.
In order to be compliant with this market and to provide effective services for its customers, TW are seeking to implement new system solutions, including Customer Relationship Management and Billing (CRB) capabilities for their non-household retail business functions and for their wholesale water and waste business functions.
At this time TW has not decided whether to procure system capabilities jointly for retail and wholesale or separately for each business function. This PQQ will help to inform that decision.
The scope of this PQQ is to select the provider of the system. The system integration provider will be selected via a separate process.
The requirements for each business functions are as follows.
Non-household retail:
TW Retail require a system(s) to enable the billing and relationship management for business customers receiving water and wastewater services. Thames are seeking system(s) to deliver the following core capabilities for our Retail business:
— Prospect to sale, contract capture and account management;
— Pricing and development of products and services;
— Bill issue, order to cash, collections (accounts receivable) and payment management;
— Debt and Credit management incorporated into a billing system;
— Core customer interactions – inbound / outbound contact (queries, complaints, issue resolution) and customer data management;
— E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Managing initiation of non-primary offerings: trade effluent and other value add products and services;
— Reporting, analytics and consumption/benchmarking analysis;
— Interfacing with internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator;
— Purchasing of wholesale services and reconciliation of wholesale and retail charges;
— Interfacing with external market registration systems and other third parties.
It is anticipated that the system(s) will be required to calculate and bill charges for at least 250,000 customers (across at least 340,000 sites) and their associated measurement/usage data, for a number of products and services. The system needs to be flexible to meet the changing requirements of the market and scalable to support increases in customer volumes, in line with business retail market in the UK.
Wholesale:
To recover wholesale revenues from retailers in relation to the provision of commodity, network and event based services, TW wholesale are seeking system/s to deliver the following capabilities:
— Pre sales, contract and customer (retailer) management;
— Service point management, service management, service measurement (metering) and tariff management;
— Financial settlement encompassing collection of usage data (meter reads), invoicing, payments and subsequent collection (accounts receivables);
— Managing new network connections requested by developers as well as provisioning event and network based services (asset work and field services);
— Core customer interactions: handling queries, complaints, work requests and communications with customers – E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Interfacing with external market registration systems and internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator.
It is anticipated that the system/s will be required to calculate and bill charges on the basis of no less than 500,000 service points and their associated meter(measurement) and usage and data read, and a range of other associated network and event based services to up to 100 retail customers.
The PQQ is structured in three lots in order to allow suppliers to bid:
1) Only on the Non-household CRB system.
2) Only on the Wholesale CRB system.
3) Both on the Non-household and Wholesale CRB systems.
Please note that, for every lot, at this stage Thames Water will take into account all hosting options for the system, including (but not limited to) cloud based, on-site hardware, shared infrastructure or own infrastructure in cloud, datacentre, SaaS as well as any interim services.

48444100, 48445000

The contract is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA): no

This contract is divided into lots: yes
Tenders may be submitted for one or more lots

Variants will be accepted: yes

Information to be provided in the invitation to negotiate.

Options: yes
Description of these options: Any agreement awarded would be for an initial duration of 1 year, with options to extend annually up to a maximum overall term of 5 years.

This contract is subject to renewal: no

Duration in months: 60 (from the award of the contract)

This lot covers the scope for non household retail CRB system as described in section II. 1.5.
TW Retail require a system(s) to enable the billing and relationship management for business customers receiving water and wastewater services. Thames are seeking system(s) to deliver the following core capabilities for our Retail business:
— Prospect to sale, contract capture and account management;
— Pricing and development of products and services;
— Bill issue, order to cash, collections (accounts receivable) and payment management;
— Debt and Credit management incorporated into a billing system;
— Core customer interactions – inbound / outbound contact (queries, complaints, issue resolution) and customer data management;
— E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Managing initiation of non-primary offerings: trade effluent and other value add products and services;
— Reporting, analytics and consumption/benchmarking analysis;
— Interfacing with internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator;
— Purchasing of wholesale services and reconciliation of wholesale and retail charges;
— Interfacing with external market registration systems and other third parties.
It is anticipated that the system(s) will be required to calculate and bill charges for at least 250,000 customers (across at least 340,000 sites) and their associated measurement/usage data, for a number of products and services. The system needs to be flexible to meet the changing requirements of the market and scalable to support increases in customer volumes, in line with business retail market in the UK.

48444100, 48445000

This lot covers the scope for the wholesale CRB system as described in section II. 1.5.
To recover wholesale revenues from retailers in relation to the provision of commodity, network and event based services, TW wholesale are seeking system/s to deliver the following capabilities:
— Pre sales, contract and customer (retailer) management;
— Service point management, service management, service measurement (metering) and tariff management;
— Financial settlement encompassing collection of usage data (meter reads), invoicing, payments and subsequent collection (accounts receivables);
— Managing new network connections requested by developers as well as provisioning event and network based services (asset work and field services);
— Core customer interactions: handling queries, complaints, work requests and communications with customers – E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Interfacing with external market registration systems and internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator.
It is anticipated that the system/s will be required to calculate and bill charges on the basis of no less than 500,000 service points and their associated meter(measurement) and usage and data read, and a range of other associated network and event based services to up to 100 retail customers.

48444100, 48445000

This lot covers the scope for both non household retail and wholesale CRB systems as described in section II. 1.5.
Non-household retail:
TW Retail require a system(s) to enable the billing and relationship management for business customers receiving water and wastewater services. Thames are seeking system(s) to deliver the following core capabilities for our Retail business:
— Prospect to sale, contract capture and account management;
— Pricing and development of products and services;
— Bill issue, order to cash, collections (accounts receivable) and payment management;
— Debt and Credit management incorporated into a billing system;
— Core customer interactions – inbound / outbound contact (queries, complaints, issue resolution) and customer data management;
— E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Managing initiation of non-primary offerings: trade effluent and other value add products and services;
— Reporting, analytics and consumption/benchmarking analysis;
— Interfacing with internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator;
— Purchasing of wholesale services and reconciliation of wholesale and retail charges;
— Interfacing with external market registration systems and other third parties.
It is anticipated that the system(s) will be required to calculate and bill charges for at least 250,000 customers (across at least 340,000 sites) and their associated measurement/usage data, for a number of products and services. The system needs to be flexible to meet the changing requirements of the market and scalable to support increases in customer volumes, in line with business retail market in the UK.
Wholesale:
To recover wholesale revenues from retailers in relation to the provision of commodity, network and event based services, TW wholesale are seeking system/s to deliver the following capabilities:
— Pre sales, contract and customer (retailer) management;
— Service point management, service management, service measurement (metering) and tariff management;
— Financial settlement encompassing collection of usage data (meter reads), invoicing, payments and subsequent collection (accounts receivables);
— Managing new network connections requested by developers as well as provisioning event and network based services (asset work and field services);
— Core customer interactions: handling queries, complaints, work requests and communications with customers – E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.) – Interfacing with external market registration systems and internal corporate systems – Interfacing and reconciling with market operator.
It is anticipated that the system/s will be required to calculate and bill charges on the basis of no less than 500,000 service points and their associated meter(measurement) and usage and data read, and a range of other associated network and event based services to up to 100 retail customers.

48444100, 48445000

Bonds and/or parent company guarantees of performance and financial standing may be required.

Specified in the Invitation to Negotiate.

Consortia may be required to form a legal entity prior to any award.

The performance of the contract is subject to particular conditions: yes
Description of particular conditions: Specified in the Invitation to Negotiate.

Information and formalities necessary for evaluating if the requirements are met: As details in section VI.3 and the PQQ.

Information and formalities necessary for evaluating if the requirements are met: As details in section VI.3 and the PQQ.

Information and formalities necessary for evaluating if the requirements are met: As details in section VI.3 and the PQQ.

Execution of the service is reserved to a particular profession: no

Legal persons should indicate the names and professional qualifications of the staff responsible for the execution of the service: no

Negotiated
Some candidates have already been selected (if appropriate under certain types of negotiated procedures): no

The most economically advantageous tender in terms of the criteria stated in the specifications or in the invitation to tender or to negotiate

An electronic auction will be used: yes
Additional information about electronic auction: Thanes Water Reserves the right to conduct an electronic auction if it wishes to do so, as part of the award criteria for the paticular contract/agreement.

FA1226

no

3.6.2014 – 12:00

English.

This is a recurrent procurement: yes
Estimated timing for further notices to be published: between 1 to 5 years

The contract is related to a project and/or programme financed by European Union funds: no

All suppliers who wish to respond to this OJEU notice must request a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) by emailingprocurement.support.centre@thameswater.co.uk providing the following details:

Company Name;
Contact Name;
Contact Email;
Contact Telephone.
Project being applied for (please state the title used in section II.1.1 of this notice).
Thames Water’s Procurement Support Centre will then send you an email (to the email address provided by you) setting out login details for Thames Water’s eSourcing system (IASTA).
To view the PQQ you will need to login to Thames Water’s eSourcing system (IASTA). The PQQ will be made available from 19/05/2014. Should you wish to submit a PQQ, you must complete and submit it on Thames Water’s eSourcing system by the date and time stated in the PQQ. Further instructions for bidders are set out within the PQQ.

Precise information on deadline(s) for lodging appeals: Thames Water Utilities Limited will incorporate a standstill period at the point information on the award of the contract is communicated to tenderers. That notification will provide full information on the award decision. The standstill period, which will be for a minimum of 10 calendar days, provides time for unsuccessful tenderers to challenge the award decision before the contract is entered into.
The Utilities Contracts Regulations (SI 2006 No 6) provide for aggrieved parties who have been harmed or are at risk of harm by a breach of the rules to take action in the High Court (England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

19.5.2014