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Energy Market Solutions Joins
UtiliPoint® International as an Affiliate:
Creates New Customer Focused Strategies & Research Practice


For Immediate Release

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—Aug. 25, 2004—UtiliPoint® International, Inc. (UtiliPoint®) announces its affiliation with Energy Market Solutions (EMS), a partnership that will add new capabilities to UtiliPoint's customer research practice. Richard (Dick) Wight, president of EMS, has developed methods that truly “listen to the customer” and help utilities identify, understand and leverage patterns of customer needs, behaviors and attitudes. EMS, after using a variety of individual and group opinion research data collection techniques, transforms the data into information that utility companies and service providers can use to develop customer focused, value-based marketing and product strategies. EMS has extensive experience in industry operations, rate structures and regulatory procedures, and in providing guidance for the challenges of building a competitive customer focused organization.

“Dick is an experienced professional who will add a new facet to our practice,” says Bob Bellemare, president and CEO of UtiliPoint®. “By combining Dick's customer-focused services with our existing rates, pricing, customer care, AMR / demand response and risk management capabilities, we can offer more to the clients we serve. With the Customer Focused Strategies & Research practice, we have added to our capability to provide the customer data our clients need to support rates and regulatory activities, and by truly “listening to the customer,” produce the objective consumer metrics necessary to evaluate the viability of proposed new products and service offerings that increase shareholder value and customer loyalty.”

As founder and president of EMS, Dick developed the company's consulting practice to focus on gas and electric utility and service provider strategic positioning for the future, both from a regulated and unregulated perspective. Since its founding, EMS has supported its clients in market research, program design, product/service market assessment and strategy consulting in the area of new product/service and pricing-related offerings.

Mr. Wight currently serves on the faculty of the EEI Electric Rates Advanced Course at the University of Wisconsin where he teaches Managing Risks and Opportunities by Understanding Customers' Needs and Behavior. Dick has also served on the Program Planning Committee of the EEI/AMA Energy Market Research Program at the annual AMA Marketing Research Conference and the faculties of the Electric Utility Market Research Course at the University of Texas; and the Georgia Tech Load Research Sampling Methods and Statistical Analysis course.

During the course of a 35+-year career in utility management and consulting, he has worked in distribution engineering, field operations, rate design, load research, marketing research, market planning, program development and program evaluation. Dick was with Southern Company for 25 years.

Dick Wight is based in Atlanta, Ga., and can be contacted at 770.455.6994 or via e-mail at rwight@utilipoint.com.

Parties interested in learning more about UtiliPoint's® other consulting practices can contact Bob Bellemare at 505.244.7612, or rbell@utilipoint.com. For information on the company's Pricing Products and Services practice, please contact Ben Long at 918.582.7734, or blong@utilipoint.com. Or visit www.utilipoint.com.