Lowering the Costs of Information Technology

1. Lowering the Costs of Information Technology Billing and Customer Care

2. The Need For A NEM Solution • As the leading market advocate for retail energy providers, NEM sought to provide members with a competitively-priced, componentized end-to-end billing and customer care solution. • Retail energy providers support billing and customer care processes through a wide range of available systems, home grown tools and manual processes today. • Changing market conditions create challenges and incremental costs for retail energy providers to modify systems and processes to support changes in market model, transaction rules and processes. • Outsourcing is an attractive option for retail energy providers by enabling access to new capabilities at a stable, predictable cost including the option to amortize upfront costs over the life of an outsourcing agreement. • Small or independent retail energy providers often lack the buying power and resource bandwidth to obtain a comprehensive end-to-end solution aligned to their business needs with a large, reputable partner.

3. The NEM Solution • Supported by Alliance Data and available to NEM members operating as retail energy providers in deregulated natural gas and electric markets the United States • Comprehensive end-to-end solution that can be implemented in components aligned to each participating member’s needs • Standardized pricing by solution component that includes discounts as aggregate member volume grows • A best practice solution that is pre-configured to support the critical customer care and billing processes of an energy retailer (all customer types) • Optional services and solution customization available to meet member-specific needs • Contractual agreements will be executed between each company and Alliance Data

4. NEM Solution Components • Customer Care – Full contact center operations to provide inbound customer service and call center back office support • Application Maintenance & Infrastructure Hosting – Including a robust retail energy solution toolkit, an Excelergy-based customer information and billing solution, and all associated customer care applications and infrastructure • Marketing & Loyalty Services – Optional loyalty program implementation and management • Debt Management – Optional hosted automated notification services to support collections activities • Remittance Processing – Lockbox processing and optional e-payment services • Critical Correspondence Generation, Print & Mail – Bill and notice print and mail with optional marketing or campaign collateral print and mail

6. NEM Solution Pricing Overview Declining Tiered Pricing Structure • Proposed pricing model is volume-based ongoing operational pricing • Advantages for early program adopters • Fixed pricing for bill print and remittance • Call Center services priced per minute • Billing Operations including CIS Hosting & Application Management priced on a per meter basis • Declining tiered pricing as aggregate NEM member participation and meter count grows • Assumptions • Implementation, Certification and Conversion Support Services costs to be priced separately per NEM member • Best practice adherence to jurisdictional and industry standards including SLAs, base solution configuration and contract terms 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% Aggregate # of Meters

7. 10 5 4 1 9 8 7 6 3 2 GO LIVE Typical Deployment (Months) Ongoing Performance Tuning Market and Business Requirement Finalization QA Testing & Certification Acceptance Testing Application Deployment, CC Staffing & Facility Plans Discovery Session Training Customer Support Session Alliance Data Creates Functional Specification Implementation Review

8. Comprehensive Solution • Robust end-to-end solution • Billing system and billing operations including print and mail • Full payment processing including lockbox, electronic payments, exception handling • Call center and customer service • Transaction and market management • Mutual commitment • Results-oriented, performance driven • People and infrastructure: SLA, Best Practices, Continuous Improvement • Financial benefits • Returns offset monthly expense • Immediately cash flow positive • Price certainty • Ongoing support services • Business Intelligence tools • Best practices • Technology refresh