Welcome to #6 of The Tide 🌊, Xoserve’s monthly newsletter, providing a summary of our progress, sharing updates and upcoming work as we navigate the waters of our UK Link modernisation project together.

To ensure you can access the latest information, we are maintaining our Project Trident homepage with all the latest materials, including past issues of The Tide and our active Project Trident Q&A log. 

Trident’s Top Three: Our headlines for the month

1. Customer Engagement and Workshops
2. Project Trident Engagement Survey
3. Independent Assurance Partner appointed

1. Customer Engagement and Workshops

Following the publication of last months' Tide, we've had a number of bilateral conversations with our customers. There have been three main talking points:

1. Recap of the vendor market engagement and Xoserve Enterprise Architecture activities with our project partners, resulting in the down-selection of the solution options Project Trident is actively working on.
2. Our request for customer insight on large re-platforming programmes (more information on this later in this issue).
3. We're giving early notice of initial workshops we'd like to hold with customers through June and early July.

With those workshops in mind, we can now confirm that, following a competitive process, Moorhouse Consulting Ltd has been appointed as our Industry Customer Engagement Partner. Moorhouse’s role will be to support the Xoserve project team with the planned industry customer workshop engagements. They bring a wealth of experience in operating successful and similar roles such as within the MHHS Programme with Elexon and various projects with Ofgem.

They are already working closely with the existing Business Architecture and Stakeholder Management workstreams and will be helping Xoserve to ensure our customers and industry stakeholders are kept informed and consulted throughout key stages of the project.

Formal notification and details of these workshops will be issued in the coming weeks.

If you would also like a direct meeting with the project team, please let us know at contact us, and we'll be happy to arrange.

2. Project Trident Engagement Survey 

After extensive vendor market engagement and the architectural development we're continuing to deliver, we're now focusing on the three potential options for the future UK Link solution:

• SAP Renewal (S/4HANA): Buy and rebuild SAP to run the next generation of SAP’s product suite (S/4HANA). No in situ upgrade available.
• Self-Build: Build own solution specific to Xoserve’s requirements and business processes.
• Hybrid: Build and buy. Buy a packaged product and build significant parts of the solution.

Project Trident now needs our customer's valued insights and experience.

Following our communication to customers on 2 April, we're keen to hear from any organisation who has had recent experience with a migration from SAP (in particular ECC6 ISU) or any other large re-platforming programmes.

Please review the email (linked above) and share this request with the appropriate colleagues who could complete our short survey (less than 2 minutes) and share your experience - we would welcome all perspectives.

3. Independent Assurance Partner

Finally, we're delighted to confirm we have appointed PWC as our Independent Assurance Partner, subject to contract, following a competitive process. 

They have a wealth of experience working within the Energy and Utilities sector on various industry wide projects such as the Switching Programme, EBRS/EBDS schemes and MHHS Programme.

Stay in touch

If you have any early feedback on the newsletter, it's content or what you’d like to see next, please email us via communications@xoserve.com. Otherwise stay tuned for more updates and thank you for your continued support.