Accenture sued by British Gas over billing system - Only a cool £182 million

By Mike Magee @ Sunday, May 11, 2008 4:32 AM

Section - Outsourcing/Outsourcing

British Gas is suing Accenture for £182 million for installing a computer billing system that's alleged to have chaos to the energy firm.

The Sunday Times said that British Gas's 'Project Jupiter' claims to have lost hundreds of thousands of customers because of bad customer service.

Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, will issue a High Court writ against Centrica this week, the newspaper said. Centrica gave Accenture the tender for the system, intended to merge the electricity and gas billing schemes into one coherent system, at a price of £317 million.

According to the Sunday Times, sometimes it took British Gas employees an hour to log into their systems.

It is all very puzzling. Mainframe computers were bought by large corporations back in the 60s to take care of things like billing systems, so the software path is well trod, with nearly 50 years of experience. An Accenture rep said that it denied the allegations and would fight them toooth and nail. X