What to look out for to ensure your
supplier is transparent?

1. Economics and pricing

Looking at the volume and shape of your consumption is the best place to start. The procurement process should be tailored to the customer’s risk appetite. If the customer has a flexible product they should have regular pricing information and the ability to act swiftly upon this.

TGP’s Customer Portal is designed to give customers the ability to transact online through their price discovery function, access price alerts, and view live prices.

“We don’t sell residual products,” Chris Billing, director of Major Business (I&C) says.

“We have index-linked products that are fully transparent to the customer. They can purchase the entire [shape] volume off the market with full transparency in the price they are paying – a clear market price.

“With residual products, energy and non-energy costs are wrapped up but with TGP, non-energy costs – transmission costs, distribution charges, taxes and so on – are visible and passed through.”

2. Market intelligence

Market intelligence is essential for making intelligent procurement decisions. TGP makes its market information available through its Procurement Portal, as well as being distributed directly to its major business customers.

The three elements encompassed within the Procurement Portal are market information, customer position reporting and a price discovery function.

Customers need to have access to their exposure in a real-time basis. Reporting on their position will aid hedged and floating positions and should also reveal the financial implications of both.

TGP has a dedicated team of energy procurement professionals situated on the trading floor of the company’s Canary Wharf office. The Procurement Desk is dedicated to dealing with the

major business customer base. The team has direct access to traded market screens, a plethora of market information and direct access to the registered traders for trade execution and market intelligence. The desk is manned from 8am to 5pm on all UK business working days.

3. Billing options

Ideally billing options should be tailored to suit each individual customer’s requirements whether it’s paper bills, online billing, EDI billing and Excel billing reports.

TGP works closely with its customers to ensure that the billing provided suits their needs and is compatible with the customer’s chosen billing system. In addition to our standard billing options, TGP will also explore any bespoke billing requirements our customers have and work to provide a suitable solution to all requests.

4. Invoice validation

Transparency of pricing and the ability to provide customers with a complete breakdown of all elements of pricing is essential. Billing validation is a key
requirement in restoring trust and understanding of suppliers’ pricing.

All reads that are received by TGP, irrespective of the source, undergo thorough validation checks. This includes but is not limited to; checks made against the meter asset details (serial number, number of dials etc), expected consumption tolerance levels and meter reading history.

5. Invoice accuracy

Invoice accuracy is imperative and suppliers must have processes in place to ensure this. TGP has a stringent validation process to continually improve billing accuracy and monitors this through a number of channels including regular 

auditing, exception working and targets to measure billing performance and accuracy.

With TGP following the validation process any meter reading exceptions will be investigated by its Major Business Servicing team with a view to resolving as many issues as possible prior to billing.

Once all readings have been validated, further checks are then completed by TGP to ensure that the estimated billing value of each site is in line with previous billed amounts. A final sanity check is then completed against the configuration of all accounts before they are considered as ‘good to bill’.

6. Getting to the truth of the matter

The public is dissatisfied with the status quo and this has led Ofgem to refer the energy market to the CMA. The CMA said that electricity prices have risen by around 75% and gas prices by around 125% in the past 10 years. Much of the recent increases are down to increased environmental and related network investment costs. Many who don’t work in energy fail to grasp this and blame the supplier for the rises. Transparency is the surest way to combat this.

The CMA report also highlighted the lack of transparency that is hampering trust in the sector. It calls for wider availability of financial information, and more effective communication of the impact of decisions on bills.

At TGP, we believe that the measures we have in place greatly reduce the chance of billing inaccuracies and lack of information that creates worries through a lack of transparency. It is essential to have trust between a supplier and their customer and this will only be achieved with a complete and open sharing of the information.