Thames Water has awarded an  AMP6 contract for Applications Development and System Integration worth an estimated £200 million to seven suppliers.

Lot 1 of the contract covered the establishment of a framework agreement for application development and system integration work. The successful suppliers will be required to implement new business applications and associated processes, to undertake major changes to current and legacy applications and deliver associated infrastructure solutions over the next 2 to 5 years. The total spend going through the framework has been estimated at over £200 million over 5 years with projects ranging in value from £500,000 to £75 million.

Lot 2 of the contract covers the selection of a system integrator for the customer relationship management and billing tool being implemented for TW's retail, non-household business.

The suppliers securing framework agreements will now become part of the Thames Water IS Development Pool. This does not give the supplier any guarantee of work, but will enable the supplier to bid for individual projects of work over the forthcoming 2 to 5 years. The majority of individual projects will be sourced under the framework via competitive tendering.

Lot 2 covers Thames Water’s retail non-household business which requires integration of a new CRM and billing system(s) to enable the billing and relationship management for business customers receiving water and waste water services. Thames is looking to put in place the following core capabilities for its retail business:

• Prospect to sale, contract capture and account management,
• Pricing and development of products and services,
• Bill issue, ready 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. eOrders, eBilling, 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 3rd parties.

Thames Water is anticipating 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.

Successful contractors for Lot 1 are CGI IT UK Ltd, Accenture (UK) Ltd, CapGemini UK PLC, Wipro Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, TATA Consultancy Services Ltd and Deloitte MCS Ltd. No information has yet been provided about contractors appointed to Lot 2.