Overview
Success Stories
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Scottish Power Grabs the Advantage and Takes Steps to
Become a Super-utility
Scottish Power is one of the largest power utility companies in the UK, serving 3.1 million customers across both domestic and business markets in Scotland, North West England and North Wales. Subsidiaries include Manweb, Scottish Telecom, Southern Water and 158-shop electrical retail outlets throughout the UK.
Scottish Power is at the forefront of liberalization in the electricity supply market, and is in a strong position for growth as the UK energy supply markets progressively expands for competition. These changes have made way for greater opportunities in the market, but there is also increased competition as the major players vie for an increased share of the utilities market. It was in preparation for this that Scottish Power began investigating how to better understand its customers' needs, and ultimately to increase the value of customer communications.
Andy Butcher, Marketing Database Development Manager, Energy Supply Division, commented: "With plenty of opportunities for growth, we knew it was a fantastic time for Scottish Power to move forward. But before we could attempt this we had to refine our direct marketing approach."
"Our customer billing system provided us with account information and contact data; however it allowed neither marketing data management nor the requisite functionality for accurate, targeted marketing communications. Not only did we wish to have a robust system able to manage marketing communications with our customers, but we also wished to ensure that the material sent to those customers was relevant and meaningful. With over three million energy utility customers, achieving comprehensive customer profiles is no mean feat!"
The Chordiant solution enables enterprises to gain a sustained competitive advantage through more efficient and effective marketing, selling and customer service. Only Chordiant solutions orchestrate and automate the end-to-end processes that enable the business, from existing back-office systems through to the communications with customers. Its marketing solution product, Chordiant Marketing Director, is designed to take advantage of new technologies to provide highly targeted marketing communications.
Marketing Director manages and controls customer communication strategies within high volume market sectors and offers desktop access to, and user control of,customer communications strategies via a centralized database.
Marketing Director was initially piloted in Scottish Power's business-to-consumer sector before being fully commissioned across all lines of the business.
With these systems fully in place, Scottish Power decided to trial Marketing Director with its 200,000 business-to-business customers. Several key objectives were identified including improved customer retention; new customer acquisition; better understanding of customer needs; and identification of customer requirements. The business units now benefit from a more in-depth understanding of their customer base, which allows focused customer targeting with tailored promotional and marketing incentives.
"It's amazing how many domestic and business customers we can now identify and specifically target—a staggering 3 million in the domestic market and 200,000 business customers," added Butcher. "We needed to get closer to our markets and to understand them better. With Marketing Director, we've been able to achieve this efficiently and cost effectively."
By integrating Marketing Director, the company can now exploit its strength as an energy supplier and strive to broaden and consolidate its core competencies across the electricity, gas, water and telecommunications markets.
"Marketing Director has produced a number of tangible business benefits allowing us to target specific messages to a market that wants to hear about them and to consolidate our activities to avoid duplication when cross-selling. Our activities are managed more efficiently, resulting in savings in time and resources—a bonus for any large service-based company," concluded Butcher.
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