SPAA Case Study: Designing and managing change

ElectraLink is proud of its reputation in the UK energy market gained through providing high quality, cost effective services and solutions to meet the ever changing needs of itsclients.

Our role as an expert Code Administrator has helped to ensure cost effective, sector leading secretarial, corporate management and administration support to SPAA and its stakeholders.

The Mission

To provide cost effective, sector leading secretarial, corporate management and administration support to SPAA at time of unprecedented change for the industry.

Role of ElectraLink

ElectraLink is the UK energy industry’s information and code governance specialist, having been the provider of the electricity data transfer network since it was established in preparation for market deregulation in 1997.

We provide a unique range of services to utility market participants and have consistently achieved the highest of customer satisfaction ratings. ElectraLink is dedicated to providing services in support of ongoing business process improvement initiatives particularly where these support industry-wide change. This has been demonstrated recently with the implementation of a brand new SPAA website to provide an efficient means of managing SPAA change and meeting documentation when we understand the pressures on today’s market participants in keeping informed and up to date

Role of the SPAA

The Supply Point Administration Agreement (SPAA) is the governance framework facilitating the interoperability required to deliver standard industry processes between gas suppliers to enable the effective and efficient transfer of consumers. Customer transfer is delivered through the Change of Supplier process and this is a key enabler of the competitive domestic supply gas market. SPAA Ltd is the corporate vehicle through which the Agreement is managed and 3rd party service providers are contracted with.

The SPAA went live in June 2004 with the aim of providing a robust, efficient and cost effective mechanism for making changes to the operational arrangements that are required to enable the flow of gas within the industry. The agreement has evolved and matured since 2004 and is a model of effective and efficient self-governance. It has been used as a template for the development of subsequent governance arrangements in both the gas and electricity markets.

Key Service Components

The key components of ElectraLink’s service provided to SPAA are:

A deepunderstanding of the governance arrangements within the agreement;

A structured approach to change process management including provision of an experienced expert to Chair theSPAA Change Board;

Management of voting processes in support of the change process and election processes;

Provision of specialist helpdesk facilities;

Maintenance and release management of the SPAA and its schedules;

Procurement of delivery to the highest quality;

Secretarial , administrative and impartial support to the SPAA Executive Committee (EC) and its specialist sub-committees including preparation and presentation of meeting papers;

Industry performance monitoring and reporting;

SPAA party management and committee memberships;

Liaising with and providing guidance to company legal advisers;

Managing 3rd party service providers on behalf of SPAA;

Full corporate and financial management of SPAA Ltd including delivery of Company Secretarial function, financial reporting, preparation and agreement of budgets and forecasts and annual audit management.

In addition to the above, ElectraLink has delivered a number of ad hoc projects as part of its service to SPAA. This has included project management of Ofgem’s Code GovernanceReview (Phase 2)by which a number of changes were required to the SPAA change processes to achieve alignment to Ofgem proposals which allowed SPAA to leverage some of the core in-house skills within ElectraLink.

What our Stakeholders have to say

Annually, ElectraLink conducts a CustomerSatisfactionSurvey to ensure it continues to provide an unrivalled service to clients and Stakeholders. In 2015, SPAA Parties reinforced the high service levels ElectraLink is providing, despite the increased level of change undergoing within the industry:

  • Meeting arrangements: 4.2 out of 5;
  • Meeting materials: 4.1 out of 5;and
  • Change management: 3.8 out of 5.

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