SPL WorldGroup, a leading provider of mission-critical software solutions for the global utility market, announced the opening of new offices in Singapore and Hong Kong, furthering its expansion in the Asia Pacific region to meet the rapidly growing demand for software solutions from the region’s energy, water and service utilities.
SPL’s expanded regional presence complements the company’s previously established offices in Australia and is part of the company’s global growth plan of opening strategically placed offices in the Asia Pacific Region. The new offices will result in SPL being able to offer focused local support and greater access to SPL’s technology, services and training. In the Asia Pacific region, SPL’s customers include Hong Kong Water Supplies Department, Origin Energy Asset Management, and Hunter Water.
As deregulation and privatization within the utility sector take hold across the region, market interest for SPL WorldGroup‚s utility solutions has increased as organizations continue to recognize the value of best-in-class, industry-specific enterprise operational solutions rather than generic ERP products, as core to their companies‚ profitability.
SPL solutions encompass the full customer lifecycle for energy, water and service companies. SPL's pre-integrated solutions unify utility business processes and provide transparency across operations, to ensure optimal customer services. SPL Customer Care & Billing (CC&B) integrates with SPL Outage Management System (OMS) and SPL Distribution Management Systems (DMS), sharing real-time trouble management data to assess outage impacts and network disruptions. Integration with SPL Enterprise Asset & Work Management (EAM) then creates work orders to repair and optimize asset performance. Further integration with SPL Mobile Workforce Management (MWM) would dispatch crews to the affected areas with real-time workforce scheduling and emergency response capabilities.
Leading analyst firm, Gartner, estimates that utility industry software spending in the Asia Pacific will top more than US $200 million by 2007. SPL itself estimates that the current annual utility license spending in Asia Pacific is nearly US $100 million for business areas addressed by SPL solutions.
SPL is also announcing the following executive appointments to support business development across Asia:
Samson Chan has been appointed director business development for Greater China. Based in Hong Kong, he joins SPL with 13 years’ experience in the IT industry and was most recently at Oracle. He previously held sales and business development positions with Siemens and systems integrator, Automated Systems, for six years.
Alvin Loh has been appointed director business development for South East Asia and has more than 15 years of substantial IT experience in business development, sales, services and channels in the ASEAN region. Based in SPL’s Singapore office, he previously worked with SAP and CommerceOne.
Claus Etienne has been appointed services director, Asia. With more than 20 years’ experience at SPL, he spent several years as project director for SPL’s Customer Care and Billing implementation at ESKOM, Africa‚s primary electricity supplier, and in Hong Kong as a project director at Hong Kong Water.
Brenton McPherson, senior vice president and managing director, Asia-Pacific, said, “The new offices and teams in Singapore and Hong Kong are integral to our success in the Asia Pacific. With deregulation and privatization underway we will build on our success to date and increase our Asia Pacific market share by competing on reliability, breadth of product and, most importantly, return on investment for our customers.”
Source: SPL WorldGroup, Inc.
