According to Centrica-owned British Gas (BG), the billing system developed by the IT firm, which reportedly cost British Gas a total of GBP300 million to design, had errors that disrupted the company’s customer service operations. BG reportedly employed additional staff to resolve the problems.
In 2001 BG employed Accenture to undertake the design and implementation of a new customer billing system. However, when this new system was rolled out during 2006-07 it became apparent that there were problems with the system which severely impacted on BG’s customer service operations, BG was quoted as saying in a statement.
An independent analysis of the billing system reportedly highlighted that Accenture was responsible for fundamental errors in the design and implementation of the system. BG was forced to invest additional money to address the system failures.
It is claimed that the UK-based utility company received a lot of flak for its poor customer services amid the new system’s roll-out in 2006 and 2007. Shareholders also had problems with the company’s billing issues, to solve which the group is said to have hired 2,500 employees.
We are confident based on the facts of the situation that this claim is baseless and without merit. The system we delivered met all of our commitments and the specifications that Centrica set. Centrica conducted extensive testing before formally accepting it and they have been using and maintaining the system for two years. Centrica has no basis for a warranty claim, an Accenture spokesman was quoted as saying.
