British Gas favoured in Accenture lawsuit judgment

British Gas had to spend extra to handle and fix issues related to its billing system

British Gas parent Centrica has been favoured in the latest stage of its multimillion-pound writ against Accenture over the rollout of a billing platform in 2006.

The High Court judgment found in the utility firm’s favour in all six preliminary issues raised by Accenture, which are intended to narrow the scope of the lawsuit, and included questions around the construction of the contract as well as the warranty claim notification over the system problems in 2007.

The SAP-based system was intended to consolidate the records of all British Gas gas and electricity clients onto a single system capable of handling hundreds of thousands of meter readings and bills daily.

But problems in the platform created such havoc in British Gas's customer billing that the energy supplier had to hire thousands of staff at the cost of £133m to handle the problems and invest a further £49m to fix them.

“British Gas is pleased with the judgment, as we feel it brings us one step closer to holding Accenture to account for the disruption caused to our customers. We look forward to moving to the full trial as soon as possible,” said a spokesman for the company.

Following the problems with Accenture, Project Jupiter was brought back in-house by British Gas in 2006, a move seen as essential to tackling the subsequent problems, according to Dave Bickerton, chief information officer at British Gas.

“If you want to deliver customer service and have world-class systems that give competitive advantage in the market, you have to have the ability to change yourself, as well as having people who understand the business and its IT footprint,” Bickerton told Computing in an interview earlier this year.

Accenture said it disagrees with the judgment and plans to appeal.

"While the judgment on preliminary issues allows Centrica’s claim to proceed to trial, there has been no final determination of the case or any of the d etailed underlying facts of this case. We remain confident that Centrica’s claim is baseless and that Accenture will prevail when the factual issues are examined in detail at trial," said a spokesman for the company.

"The fact is that the Jupiter system Accenture delivered in 2005 met all contractual requirements; it was delivered on time and on budget. Centrica signed off on the design of the system and conducted extensive testing before formally accepting it and using it," he said.

"In March 2006, Centrica made the business decision to take the Jupiter system in-house, ensuring total control over all aspects of the system. Centrica operated the system for more than two years before its warranty claim was made. Centrica is still using the Jupiter system today."