The competitive Energy Supply and Utility Metering Services market model in the UK is characterised by the positioning of a range of market 'agent' role holders working together to assure the integrity of industry defined market processes on behalf of Supply companies.

Industry qualified agents are responsible for the delivery of particular role specific business requirements against metering assets. The aggregated set of business requirements delivered by the variety of role holders forms the complete set required to address the metering asset life-cycle as a whole. The integrity of the market model is dependent upon the effective delivery of each individual agent responsibility and the effective communication of change between related or dependant agents.

Salient's PAMS applications framework provides a consistent, robust, scalable and flexible vehicle to address all of the service delivery and agent interface requirements attached to a range of industry agent roles operating within the UK competitive market.

Click here to see a diagram of PAMS and its interfaces

The PAMS applications framework has been constructed using Salient's Generic Design Framework (GDF) component set, delivering an n-tier technical architecture implementation incorporating Microsoft .Net Gui, Web Services initiated Microsoft .Net middle tier(s) and Oracle portfolio database repository tier(s). GDF facilities deliver appropriate and superior navigation through business process status data, audit data and portfolio data, together with extensive, flexible and user configurable data maintenance, data reporting and graphical presentation facilities with built-in interfaces to Office tools.

The framework takes advantage of the most modern building block components and ensures that very modest hardware resource commitments are required to host high volume portfolio implementations. For very large implementations (> 5 million assets) options of additional load balanced middle tier resources and Oracle RAC implementations at the database tier provide cost effective mechanisms that will assure continuing consistent and predictable performance.

Salient's Business/Service/Contract Model driven rule base lies at the heart of each PAMS application database tier - alongside the relevant asset portfolio database upon which the business rules will operate - automatically. The Business Model driven rule based approach not only enables the 'steady state' navigation through business process step actions and their dependencies but also models process anomalies, stalls and breakdowns, thus enabling further automated process corrections and interventions where appropriate. Although PAMS implementations are complemented by extensive, intuitive and industry approved user intervention mechanisms the 'Management by Exception' design goal will continue to be a priority design objective for all PAMS implementations.

The Business Model driven design within PAMS solutions is a major positive differentiator when PAMS solutions are evaluated alongside other solution offers. PAMS provides the user with a clear view into Business Process status directly rather than demanding complex user interpretation of status through evaluations of multiple data flow based interface events. Extended, refined and hybrid configurations of services to accommodate Industry Change (e.g. Smart) or alternate Market Model requirements (non-UK) can be quickly accommodated within the PAMS Business/Service/Contract Model framework.

The PAMS technical architecture and Model driven design, coupled with realistic and attractive 'tiered' once-off licence fee structures (based upon managed asset volumes) together provide unbeatable ROI's to PAMS adopters.

Salient have delivered Electricity NHHDC (PAMS DC), NHHMO (PAMS MO) and NHHDR (PAMS DR) agent solutions to a number of successful metering service providers in the UK. In all cases PAMS's solutions have assured accelerated industry agent role qualifications and client business service mobilisations.