Titanium: Aligning Pricing and Billing

This article was written by Steve Veal, Global Transformation Director at ESG Global.

In my role at ESG Global, I spend a great deal of time talking to energy suppliers about a problem that shouldn’t exist, but still does. They can create bespoke pricing for a contract. They can sell it. They can promise it to a customer. Then, when the time comes to invoice it accurately and at scale, the billing platform falls short.

For UK Industrial & Commercial (I&C) energy suppliers, that gap between pricing and billing creates more than frustration. It creates manual workarounds, billing delays, revenue leakage, , and a constant drag on innovation. It also makes it far harder for leadership teams to scale operations, control cost-to-serve, and respond quickly to market dynamics and change.

That’s the core idea behind Titanium. We built it to remove the disconnect. Titanium links pricing and billing directly, so suppliers can move from deal design to invoice production without losing speed, control, or confidence. Put simply, if a product can be priced in Titanium, it can be billed in Titanium.

The Problem with Disconnected Pricing and Billing

Many suppliers are still operating with a patchwork of legacy billing systems, separate pricing tools, spreadsheets, and manual interventions. That may keep the business running in the short term, but it creates a serious operational weakness.

The pricing team can construct a sophisticated tariff or flex contract, yet the billing team may have to recreate that logic elsewhere, interpret it manually, or settle for a simplified invoice that doesn’t fully reflect the product sold.

That disconnect is especially painful for the audience we designed Titanium for: UK I&C and SME suppliers with ambitious growth plans. These organisations are often dealing with fragmented platforms, siloed data, rising operational costs, and increasing pressure to adapt to regulatory change such as MHHS and wider Ofgem expectations.

They need stronger audit trails, faster reporting, and a clearer line of sight from commercial intent to operational execution.

When pricing and billing sit apart, errors multiply:

• Margin is put at risk.
• Manual workarounds need to be created.
• Teams spend too much time reconciling exceptions.
• Product launches slow down because the business no longer trusts the path from tariff creation to invoice.

From a board perspective, that means slower growth, weaker agility, and less confidence in the numbers.

This is why the direct link matters so much.

Why I&C suppliers need something purpose-built

One of the biggest mistakes in this market has been to assume that I&C billing is simply residential billing with a few adjustments. It’s not. The data structures, account models, pricing complexity, and settlement requirements are different from the ground up.

An I&C supplier may need to manage a group account with hundreds or even thousands of sites, each with different contracts, invoice destinations, payment responsibilities, and reporting needs. Some invoices need to go to individual sites, some to subsets of the estate, and some to a central group function. A domestic platform built on a simple one-site-to-one-account model will always struggle with that level of flexibility.

Then there’s product complexity. I&C suppliers deal with flex contracts, risk premiums, tolerances, commodity trades, bespoke commercial terms, and increasingly sophisticated energy buyers.
The market is also moving towards more embedded generation, more renewables, more dynamic time-of-use structures, and more complex net import and export arrangements. All of which adds on even further complexity

That’s why Titanium was designed specifically for the I&C market rather than adapted from a residential base. We wanted the architecture itself to reflect the realities of this sector.

From pricing logic to billing accuracy

At the most detailed level, pricing in the UK market is driven by half-hourly data. That matters because every part of the cost stack can affect the final commercial structure. If your pricing engine handles that granularity properly, you gain a much more accurate and auditable commercial foundation. But the real value emerges when that same pricing logic flows straight into billing.

That is what Titanium does. It connects the pricing engine and the billing engine so that the product created in pricing isn’t merely referenced by billing: it’s billable by design. There’s no need to reinterpret the tariff, rebuild the structure manually, or create a workaround outside the platform. The same logic that supports the sale supports the invoice.

On the billing side, it means fewer exceptions, less manual correction, faster first-time billing , and greater confidence in invoice accuracy. On the pricing side, it means the freedom to innovate without fear that billing will become the blocker. That leads to reduced revenue leakage, better cost control, and a stronger business case for growth.

That’s why one of the fundamental aspects of Titanium is that if you can price it, you can bill it.

Benefits Across Your Entire Business

Although I come at this from a billing perspective, the benefits are much broader than the billing team alone. Titanium gives suppliers a single source of truth across pricing, billing and wider operational workflows, which helps remove the unecrtainty that often happens when systems are fragmented and data is inconsistent.

In terms of operations, you get simpler workflows, lower manual effort, and ultimately a lower cost to serve. You get a stronger compliance standing through stronger auditability, clearer controls, and a platform that is easier to adapt as regulation changes. Your customer-facing teams in particular feel the benefit, as a supplier can deliver exactly what was sold, on time and without dispute.

This matters when suppliers are thinking about growth. Many suppliers want to launch new products, enter adjacent markets, or support more complex customer requirements, but they are held back by the systems underneath them. If every new tariff introduces more operational risk, that innovation becomes expensive. Titanium is designed to reverse that equation.

Built For A Market That Will Only Get More Complex

The direction of travel in energy is clear. I&C products will continue to become more dynamic. Customers will expect more flexibility. Suppliers will need to handle more embedded generation, more renewable structures, more sophisticated optimisation, and more varied commercial models.

A platform built on workarounds will struggle to keep pace, while a platform built with the right architecture can evolve with the market. That was a central design principle for Titanium. It’s modular, purpose-built, and designed to support change rather than resist it.

Price It. Bill It

Ultimately, the real promise of Titanium is straightforward. It gives suppliers confidence that what they create commercially can be delivered operationally and billed accurately from day one.
That sounds simple, but in this market it’s transformative. When pricing and billing are genuinely connected, suppliers reduce manual effort, protect margin, strengthen compliance, improve reporting, and launch products with greater speed and certainty. They move from patching gaps to building advantage.

From where I sit, that’s the standard the industry should expect. If you can price it, you should be able to bill it. With Titanium, you can.

FAQs

Who is Titanium designed for?

Titanium was designed for UK I&C and SME suppliers with ambitious growth plans, particularly those dealing with fragmented platforms, siloed data, rising operational costs, and growing pressure to adapt to regulatory change such as MHHS and wider Ofgem expectations.
It was built specifically for the I&C market rather than adapted from a residential base, because the data structures, account models, pricing complexity, and settlement requirements are different from the ground up.

How does Titanium align pricing and billing for I&C energy suppliers?

Titanium connects the pricing engine and the billing engine so that the product created in pricing is billable by design. That means there’s no need to reinterpret the tariff, rebuild the structure manually, or create a workaround outside the platform, because the same logic that supports the sale supports the invoice.

What are the benefits of connecting pricing and billing in Titanium for I&C energy suppliers?

When pricing and billing are genuinely connected, suppliers reduce manual effort, protect margin, strengthen compliance, improve reporting, and launch products with greater speed and certainty. Titanium also provides a single source of truth across pricing, billing, and wider operations, helping to simplify workflows, lower cost to serve, and give suppliers more confidence as they scale.

About The Author

Steve Veal is a senior operations and product leader with over 25 years’ experience delivering large-scale transformation and growth across the UK energy sector. Currently serving as Global Transformation Director at ESG Global, he specialises in helping client energy suppliers modernise complex billing environments, improve operational performance, and enhance customer outcomes.