Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL), wholly owned by the Government of Karnataka, is responsible for the transmission and distribution of power. It serves 109 lakh consumers of different categories spread across the state, covering an area of 1.92 lakh square kilometres. This year KPTCL has become a transmission company while four independent companies—Bangalore Electricity Supply Company, Mangalore Electricity Supply Company, Hubli Electricity Supply Company and Gulbarga Electricity Supply Company—will take care of power distribution.

Challenges before KPTCL: In the Bangalore urban and rural districts there are more than two million customers. Sanjiv Kumar, who is the director-Personal & Information Technology at KPTCL says, “Computerisation of 52 subdivisions began in October 2000. There were two basic problems KPTCL was facing—it was difficult for KPTCL staff to track bills. On an average each person deals with 1,200 accounts. Secondly we were unable to track the record of power generated and utilised. As a result, we were not able to utilise power effectively.” Cases of corruption and bribery were common in KPTCL and the system lacked transparency.

Kumar adds that KPTCL was looking for billing software to help it increase efficiency in billing and conducting energy audits to check power generation and availability and help in load balancing. BSES had a billing solution but it was ineffective and was unable to meet their requirements.

Each month KPTCL processes close to two million bills. In phase I of the project, it computerised cash counters at 52 subdivisions providing computerised electricity bills for 16 lakh customers in Bangalore urban and another 4.5 lakh customers in Bangalore rural districts. KPTCL decided to give the entire project to TCS, which developed a customised ‘Billing and Collection Software’ to be implemented in 52 subdivisions. The total investment in setting up the IS infrastructure was Rs 8 crore. KPTCL has a distributed server architecture running on an HP E800 NetServer (Intel Pentium III and 128 MB SDRAM). Its customer databases are hosted on an Oracle database while 52 HP servers have been supplied by HCL Technologies.

To improve the customer experience, KPCL has tied-up with ICICI Bank to enable customers to pay KPTCL bills. Citizens of Bangalore can now view their electricity bill and pay it over the Internet using www.billjunction.com. ICICI has 1.5 lakh customers in Bangalore but currently only 1,100 of them are using this facility. Kumar says, “Customers have to give us the instruction and only then can we debit the amount. For customers who don’t bank with ICICI, they can utilise this facility by paying Rs 5 per transaction.” KPTCL has plans to increase awareness of this new facility.

Each computerised bill generated by KPTCL has a bar code. The bar code reader gets customer details in less than 30 seconds, which otherwise used to take three to five minutes using the old manual method.

“Computerisation of subdivisions has helped us in providing value-added services to consumers. We are offering an interactive voice recording (IVR) system for complaint booking. This service is available in Bangalore, Mangalore, Mysore, Belgaum, Hubli and Dharwad. Additionally, consumers can log into our website at www.kptcl.com and lodge complaints there. There is a 24-hour help line available at 96280 96288.”

Benefits: The computerisation of 52 subdivisions will help KPTCL to keep track of each customer account and reduce response time, bringing transparency into the system. Besides this, by using TCS’s billing software the corporation will be able to analyse data, trends in usage and in conducting energy audits.

In phase II of the project, KPTCL is planning to introduce computerised bills to 14 divisions in five districts of Karnataka—Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli, Dharwad, Belgaum and Mandya. Kumar says, “These divisions will be operational by November 2002.”

Future projects of KPTCL include computerisation to roll out its ‘Project Management’ initiative. Each year KPTCL receives Rs 900 crore as capital investment to be spent on 300 big projects in the range of Rs 3 crore to 150 crore. The project management system will help KPTCL monitor disposal of capital investments. Presently this project is being piloted in Bangalore. Once the pilot is successfully implemented, it will be rolled out throughout KPTCL. The project management software is being developed by TCS.

Other plans are afoot to develop software to manage Rs 300 crore worth of materials such as electric meters, cables, transformers and the like. This software is again being developed by TCS for implementation in 300 KPTCL stores. It will help in inventory control.