Since Secure's success at winning AMI contracts with Victorian utilities such as Jemena and CitiPower and Powercor, we have also been successful at winning business as usual (BAU) contracts. These contracts may not be as lucrative as the large AMI contracts, however they provide a channel to market for our non-AMI meters and can be just as exciting and challenging to win and manage.
The BAU segment gives our organisation the opportunity to engage with other utilities across Australia that are not quite ready for AMI, but still need a metering solution to fulfill their requirements in today's market. Furthermore, it gives Secure the opportunity to use our experience and provide utilities with a succession plan to migrate from BAU meters to AMI meters.
Over the past two years BAU has gathered momentum in Australia, which has seen Secure's growth in meter sales in excess of 130,000 in this segment. This has seen the sales department grow from a single salesperson to a proactive team of four (Ian Levell, Kate Matuska, Rick Phelps and I, Brenton Davies) and looks to be getting bigger as we move forward into the future. With current BAU contract wins, such as ACTEWAGL, Ausgrid and our most recently won contract with Essential Energy, there are no signs of it slowing down. Furthermore, and just as exciting for Secure is that under these current contracts we will see the adoption of our new meter i-Credit 500B for the first time this year in Australia.
In an effort to continuously drive sales in Australia and promote our metering products, the sales team seeks to gain other business from Commercial & Industrial (C&I) customers. These are non-utility customers that provide metering products and services to other segments. We have now developed a handful of these types of customers that we supply meters to, and in time and with hard work from our sales team, we will see this area of the business grow and develop further.
The BAU sales team does not just concentrate on meter sales, we are also enthusiastically promoting our in-home displays (IHD's) to utilities and retailers across Australia. The IHD is an exciting opportunity for Secure, because it represents the next stage of the AMI roll-out here in Victoria and provides utilities a complete meter to IHD solution. Therefore, on the back of our success in winning AMI contracts, we will use our technical knowledge and experience to assist our customers in running in-home display trials, with a view to future roll-out on the product.
The years ahead and beyond, will prove to be just as challenging as our past, as we ramp up our efforts and increase our commitment to work hard to win more BAU contracts with other utilities across Australia and New Zealand for Secure.
Brenton Davies works in Melbourne. He joined Secure in September 2010. He is an account manager.