Outsourcing

Duke Energy is outsourcing its human resources (HR) operations and information technology to Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services firm, under a new seven-and-a-half-year contract. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. About 100 Duke Energy employees, out of a total of 21,500 in the U.S. and Canada, will lose their jobs because of the move, but Duke said some may still be retained by Hewitt. Most of the affected employees are located at Duke’s Charlotte headquarters. Hewitt will provide comprehensive back-office administrative human resources services, including payroll, active employee and retiree health and insurance enrollment and status, retirement plan administration, staffing and training enrollment and status, work force event and salary administration, and performance management administration, to the company’s U.S. and Canadian employees and retirees. The company said that all of its U.S. and Canadian employees and benefit plan participants will see changes in the manner in which they access some HR information and/or how they perform certain HR-related functions.

Duke Energy said Monday that it is outsourcing its human resources (HR) operations and information technology to Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services firm, under a new seven-and-a-half-year contract. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Southern Company GAS and Accenture have signed a seven-year business process outsourcing agreement under which Accenture will provide customer care and revenue cycle activities, including billing, contract management and collections, to the Atlanta-based company. The agreement, which is worth an estimated $80 million, is designed to improve the quality and lower the cost of the customer care and billing services that the Southern Co. subsidiary provides to its more than 200,000 natural gas customers. The services covered under the agreement include call center, billing, correspondence management, transaction management, revenue management, collections and exception processing operations. Accenture will provide the services through Accenture Business Services for Utilities, a subsidiary that provides back office management services to the utilities industry across North America. Accenture also will provide all customer care-related information technology (IT) services and key marketing services, such as outbound and inbound customer acquisition processing. Southern Company GAS will retain ownership of all customer-related data and the underlying IT systems and expects its current management team to continue to play an active role with operations.

The substantial energy management outsourcing relationshipbetween New England gas distributor Yankee Gas and energy marketerTransCanada Gas Services continues to grow. After a competitivebidding process, Yankee signed a new one-year contract that allowsTransCanada to manage another large part of Yankee’s gas supply,storage and long-haul pipeline capacity.

The substantial energy management outsourcing relationshipbetween New England gas distributor Yankee Gas and energy marketerTransCanada Gas Services continues to grow. After a competitivebidding process, Yankee signed a new one-year contract that allowsTransCanada to manage another large part of Yankee’s gas supply,storage and long-haul pipeline capacity.

Packaged Ice Inc. plans to outsource energy management of 60U.S. ice manufacturing facilities to Enron Energy Services (EES).Enron will evaluate and implement capital projects related toPackaged Ice’s “private utility” to increase productivity andefficiency of the plants. Enron also will provide electricity ormanage energy procurement at the facilities.

March 17 is the deadline for bidders to present proposals tosupply and manage the natural gas, electric and water and sewerutility services for the National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak)at facilities across the country. The current bill for the services- which Amtrak would like to see reduced – is $30 million a year.