Kinetiq powers into Australia with full service solution

By ADAM GIFFORD

Power bills for many of Australia's largest companies will for the next five years be done out of Auckland thanks to a seven-figure deal between power billing software developer Kinetiq and AusPower.

Corporate affairs manager Trevor Robertson said AusPower, a subsidiary of generator Yallourn Energy, was focused on retail sales to large customers, having between 10 and 15 per cent of industrial and commercial electricity users over 4 gigawatt a year.

Its previous billing contractor, which provided a system from industry heavyweight SPL, is quitting the market.

Kinetiq's PV2 solution won out on "all the usual factors" such as speed to implement, functionality and cost.

Having the servers based in New Zealand was not a concern. "We operate right across Australia, and New Zealand is closer than some of our customers," he said.

Kinetiq chief executive Gavin Mitchell said Kinetiq's Auckland data centre already managed wholesale settlements for eight small Canadian power companies, but AusPower would be the first customer to be offered a full service billing bureau.

"It means we operate our software on their behalf, from receiving the data, producing the bills, forwarding them to the print company and passing files back to their financial systems," Mitchell said.

Kinetiq has joined another New Zealand company, Moore Gallagher, to manage mailing services and online billing.

PV2 normally costs between $300,000 and $1 million per installation, but Mitchell said the company was keen to build up its outsourcing business.

"Energy industry billing is a process, not just a product, but in many cases smaller companies don't always have the time or resources to invest in specialised software."

He said the regular income from outsourcing could offset some of the uncertainty faced by software businesses dependent on high-value licence sales.

Kinetiq, a subsidiary of listed Spectrum Resources, had revenue of about US$4.3 million ($7.9 million) in the year to June 30 last year.

Kinetiq