A small to medium sized retail energy supplier asked Moorhouse to undertake an impact assessment in relation to MHHS, reviewing their enterprise-wide capability to leverage the benefits of this future complex industry change.
The supplier’s concern was driven by an awareness that whilst MHHS would be a game-changer for the industry, they were uncertain of the implications for their own organisation and how to take advantage of the opportunities presented. These opportunities included the ability to serve their customers better, and options to improve the commerciality and competitiveness of the company.
What was the challenge?
The implementation of MHHS is a mandated industry change and an enabler for many of the benefits of smart metering. It underpins most of the planned benefits attributable to time of use pricing and demand-side flexibility, leading towards energy system evolution and decarbonisation. When coupled with smart meter data, MHHS can allow companies to more efficiently forecast the supply and demand of electricity. The change touches many different systems and processes within an energy company, and so understanding how to prioritise the work to deliver the benefits is complex.
Moorhouse were brought in to carry out an enterprise-wide MHHS commercial and customer impact assessment, to identify gaps and opportunities and to recommend future initiatives and prioritisation of activities.
This supplier had been focused on other priorities throughout 2023 and were reliant on their appointed third parties and software providers to deliver MHHS on their behalf, as is typical for a supplier of their size. This reliance on third parties to implement MHHS-related changes for them meant that they did not possess enough practical knowledge of the types of benefit the industry change could unlock for them in terms of commercial offerings, procedural improvements and customer service differentials.
How did we help?
Moorhouse carried out a review of the supplier’s processes, future plans, operating model and technologies, assessing them alongside existing processes and systems.
The MHHS Target Operating Model was used as a reference point throughout this assessment. This model considers both domestic and commercial business processes, and was used to identify any gaps in benefits realisation of the outputs of the MHHS programme.
The assessment involved a series of interviews with the MHHS Central team, internal client stakeholders and teams and third parties. Questions covered internal processes, known inefficiencies, reporting and metric tracking, and how the teams were planning to take advantage of the new MHHS landscape commercially and procedurally.
Interviews with the client’s software providers and agents covered contract discussions, performance management, changes to systems and the dissemination of guides and training materials to support the client’s operational teams once the change was made live and operational.
Based on these interviews and available documentation, Moorhouse were able to create a scorecard which assessed the readiness of each business area against a set of key criteria & metrics with future benefits realisation in mind.
What was the impact?
Moorhouse provided their client with a clear picture of their current position. This enabled improved understanding of the changes being implemented as a result of MHHS and the impact it will have on processes and systems currently managed by internal teams and their third parties.
A set of recommendations was made for each business area affected by MHHS which included Trading, Settlement, Customer, Metering, Billing, Data, Compliance, Products & Propositions and centralised industry change and programme management. This allowed each business area to understand their current delivery status, key risks and recommended next steps to prepare for operationalising the changes brought about by MHHS.
A final report was created and delivered to senior leaders, individual business areas and third parties to ensure that there was clarity on future priorities. Third-party management, data cleansing and preparation for qualification were highlighted as focus areas for 2024 as the supplier prepared to make the change and maximise benefits realisation potential.
