De-regulation in the UK has historically been introduced to fulfil short-term objectives, and the longer term stability of a volume market has not been given sufficient forethought.

For example, competition in the electricity market started in September 1990 for those customers taking more than 1MW, with a further tranche of customers whose maximum demand exceeded 100kW being added in 1994. Significant systems investment was made for around 60,000 supplies.

The electricity market was finally opened up to full competition in 1998 and the previous market structure was migrated to the new over the following two years. Effectively major developments carried out in 1990 and 1994 were abandoned because the final structure of the industry had not been determined at the outset.

Similarly in gas, competition was achieved by splitting the monopoly supplier into a supply business and a distribution business at de-nationalisation. For systems convenience, these two players arranged to interwork using data flows that had hitherto been internal. As new participants entered the market, they were expected to work with these formats, as a de-facto industry standard.

Now that gas has entered a period of increased complexity, with the introduction of ‘unbundling’ of meter services from the distribution business, continued adherence to the old ways of working may prove ineffective, and compromise the quality of data.

We have seen that the development of both electricity and gas markets in the UK have been hampered by conflict in the industry change control process. Indefine provides evenhanded support for necessary changes.

Players have tried to avoid changes to systems and processes, but fail to achieve long term efficiencies. Indefine understands integration with legacy systems, and specifies cost-effective developments.

Expansion of competition should not occur until the entire logical structure of an industry has been defined. Indefine maintains a clear vision of the industry model and ensures that all spending on competition supports the eventual goal.