Origin Energy is continuing to scale out its next generation retail business model via its Retail X offshoot with over 850,000 customers now migrated onto the Kraken platform.
Origin, in partnership with UK’s Octopus Energy developed Retail X in 2020 for the rollout of Octopus' cloud-based platform ‘Kraken’ across Origin’s retail business to improve the customer experience.
In its half year results, Origin revealed 855,000 customers have now been migrated to Kraken.
Origin said it on track to migrate all remaining customers by the end of 2022.
Managing director and chief executive officer Frank Calabria told investors during an analyst call the Kraken rollout “brings together technology, a new operating model, growing the scale and products of the business”, and offers greater access to further investments and alliances.
In 2020, the energy company laid out plans to transfer 3.8 million retail electricity and gas customer accounts to Kraken, and deliver pre-tax cash savings of $70-80 million in FY2022 increasing to $100-150 million annually from FY2024.
However, Calabria told investors these financial targets have since shifted higher.
“The capabilities, the culture and the operating model that we bring together have led to improvements over recent years in our customer experience and reduced cost but we set our targets higher again," Calabria said.
Calabria said Origin had delivered $110 million in savings since 2018, is now targeting a further $100 million, and hopes to reach $250 million in operating and capital cost savings by 2024.
“The key driver of that will be the implementation of this model and the implementation of the Kraken technology coming together for the benefit of a lower cost retail model.”
Calabria added Octopus, which Origin has as an 18.7 percent interest in, “has continued its impressive growth” and has “grown … much faster than we expected”.
