Eskom goes live with SPL CorDaptixä Providing low-cost electricity for the South African population

Eskom, South Africa's electricity provider and recent winner of the Financial Times Global Energy Awards, has this month successfully implemented and 'gone live' with the first phase of their implementation of SPL WorldGroup's next generation

London, November 21, 2002 - Eskom, South Africa's electricity provider and recent winner of the Financial Times Global Energy Awards, has this month successfully implemented and 'gone live' with the first phase of their implementation of SPL WorldGroup's next generation CorDaptixä customer management solution. This phase deals with the conventionally billed customers and the next phase, which is planned to go live in March, will cover the prepaid customers.

Rob van Zyl, EnCoRe Programme Director for Eskom: commented on the conventional customer implementation of SPL's CorDaptix solution, "The EnCoRe programme has been extremely successful. I believe the tight timeframe, implementation success and solution quality is in a part due to the quality of the CorDaptix solution and that this project would not have been as successful without the close strategic relationship that has been built with SPL WorldGroup."

Eskom's van Zyl, commented that the company's previous home-grown billing system had been proving inadequate to provide the level of service required for Eskom to meet its stated intent to assist and be part of the ongoing South African government's initiative to provide basic levels of low-cost electricity to the entire population, especially those in the more disadvantaged rural areas.

A flexible and scalable billing system catering for a wide range of payment and pre-payment methods is a key element in being able to meet these requirements. Eskom's traditional billing system provided adequate customer support, but from a financial and credit management point of view was inadequate resulting in high levels of arrears and non-payment, making management of the ongoing service extremely difficult. Better revenue management in order to fund expansion of the utility network led Eskom to seek a more sophisticated solution in SPL's CorDaptix product.

Rob van Zyl concluded: "The initial response from my users has been very positive, specifically regarding the ease of use and logic of CorDaptix and the successful implementation of this programme will allow us to meet not only our revenue targets but also our social objectives as required by our status as a government owned utility in the future."

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About Eskom
Eskom, owned by the South African government, generates 95 percent of the electricity used in South Africa. The company owns and operates more than 300,000 kilometres of transmission, distribution, and reticulation lines and sells more than 180,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually to industrial (26.8 percent of sales), mining (17.6 percent), residential (4 percent), commercial (3.5 percent), and agricultural (2.3 percent) customers as well as to national and international re-distributors. More than 96 percent of Eskom's 3.2 million customers are residential.

Eskom is the ninth largest electric utility in the world based on sales and the seventh largest based on generation capacity. Its strategic intent is to be the pre-eminent African energy and related services business, of global stature, growing shareholder value by exceeding its local and international customers' needs for energy and related services by 1) vigorously promoting economic growth in South Africa, its region and the rest of Africa, 2) expanding globally, and 3) supporting social and economic objectives in its markets. Eskom is frequently cited as providing the lowest-cost electricity in the world.

About SPL
Established in 1994, SPL WorldGroup is a leading provider of best-of-breed customer management solutions to the energy and service related industries in regulated and competitive markets worldwide. With a 100% record of successful implementations, SPL continues to demonstrate its place as the market leader in providing flexible and scalable customer management solutions that evolve with client requirements and enable unrivaled business responsiveness. SPL has delivered its customer management products to more than 50 energy, water and waste management customers worldwide. SPL employs over 600 professionals in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Visit SPL WorldGroup at www.splwg.com or call +44 (0)20 7851 6840.

© 2002 SPL WorldGroup, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SPL WorldGroup, SPL and CorDaptix are trademarks owned by SPL WorldGroup B.V. or its subsidiaries. SPL WorldGroup and SPL are registered as trademarks in the United States and in certain foreign jurisdictions. All other brand, product and company names herein are used for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective owners.

For further information, please contact:

Michelle Adair   
EuroPR Group   
+44 (0)20 8879 3033
mailto:madair@europrgroup.com

Deborah Biscomb
SPL WorldGroup (UK) Ltd
+44 (0)20 7851 6840
mailto:deborah_biscomb@splwg.com

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