Meralco: Customers to eventually pay for new info system costing P325M

Manila Electric Co. said in its application for a provisional authority from the Energy Regulatory Commission that the customer information system (CIS) it wants to put in place will cost P325.243 million, which its clients will pay for later on.

 

Meralco said its current retail rates for the “third regulatory period” will not be affected, but the cost of the CIS will likely be reflected in the next regulatory period.

 

It also said the CIS will be operated together with the current mainfrane system installed in 1997, but is more technologically-advanced and designed to handle more workload.

 

However, earlier ERC approval of the CIS limits the system to Meralco's general customers—a situation which the power distributor said constrained them to “retain the CMS Mainframe for its other customer segments.”

 

“Having to maintain both application systems, instead of just one, entails more costs and more complex interventions for integration, financial interfaces and reports," Meralco claimed.

 

Merlaco added that the CIS will be devoted to 3,000 of its larger clients in commercial operations, business center, service sectors and call centers. 

 

The older mainframe will then be for the nearly 5.2 million Meralco customers with residential, general services, small commercial/industrial and flat streetlight accounts.

 

"Maintaining the same system without any upgrades will result in degradation of the system performance, increased risk of inavailibity due to insufficient storage space and lack of vendor support for any new incidences that may occur," Meralco said.

 

The power distributor said the mainframe took on 65 million transactions per month in 2004. In 2012, that transaction volume rose to 168 million transaction per month.  — ELR, GMA News