DALLAS, Texas /Publishers Newswire/ — Cogent Technology Group, Inc announced today that their Energy Marketer Data Reconciliation System (EMDRS) software product has been chosen by Vertex Business Services to provide a select number of its clients operating in the Texas deregulated electricity market with a means to reduce variances between ERCOT’s SCR 727 ESIID Service History & Usage Extract data and their internal customer billing data. Vertex Business Services is a global leader in Business Process Outsourcing and Customer Information Systems and is a major provider of billing and customer care services to energy marketers in North America.
The company wanted a turn-key approach to providing Texas-based clients with a way to track and closely manage customer ownership and usage-history discrepancies between internal customer billing data and ERCOT’s SCR727 reference data. With the EMDRS product, Vertex expects to proactively reduce the number of (810 and 867) market transaction errors with which back-office employees are forced to contend, and to bring greater confidence to their marketer clients in the settlement process by assuring the integrity of their service history data.
Cogent’s EMDRS solution is comprised of two major components which operate independently of each other. The Data Flow Manager component manages the daily download of any of a marketer’s many data extracts that are available on ERCOT’s TML internet portal. After download, the data can optionally be loaded into an ERCOT-supplied database schema that is specific to the particular extract. This component’s dashboard, which provides the marketer with a centralized view of the daily file-transfer and data-load activity, is accessible from any client computer on their network.
The Extensible Variance Manager component is the comparison engine that periodically validates the marketer’s customer billing data against the ERCOT SCR727 Service and Usage History data. Any variances that are found during the comparison process are recorded in the product’s database and are available for review or to be worked by the marketer’s back-office staff. Outstanding variances can be electronically submitted to ERCOT’s MarkeTrak facility for remediation.
“We are excited by the huge productivity increases that EMDRS can bring to an energy marketer. Our plan is to introduce this product in all deregulated energy markets across the country,” said Austin Pitt, Sales Manager at Cogent.
About Vertex Business Services
Vertex Business Services is the leader in Customer Management Services for Utilities in North America. Founded in 1996 as a subsidiary of British utilities provider United Utilities, Plc., Vertex was purchased by a consortium of three leading US investment firms to become a privately held company in 2007. The company has grown organically and through acquisition in North America to offer transformational business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology (IT) services to the Utilities sector.
In July 2008, Vertex acquired Alliance Data’s Utilities Services division. Today the company employs nearly 9,000 people in North America, the United Kingdom, and India. In the Utilities sector within North America, Vertex has over 2,500 dedicated professionals, 18 Centers of Excellence, and more than 70 electric, gas and water clients. For more information, visit http://www.vertexoutsourcing.com/.
About Cogent Technology Group, Inc.
Cogent Technology Group specializes in custom software and software consulting services for marketers operating in the deregulated energy industry. Cogent’s software professionals have the experience needed to help energy marketers navigate the challenges of the industry by providing cost-effective solutions that reduce operating expenses and increase organizational efficiency. In addition to EMDRS, Cogent currently offers a Sales Commission Manager software product for managing the generation of residual sales commissions, and their DealFlow solution for automating the pricing of sales quotes and the creation of retail energy contracts. For more information, visit http://www.ctginc.biz/ or call 678-888-0730.
Send2Press(R) is the originating wire service for this story, Copr. 2009.
