A Comprehensive Guide in 2023

Within the utilities sector, the meter-to-cash course of is crucial for income technology and environment friendly operations. It includes quite a few intricate steps and techniques. Meter-to-cash options have emerged as an indispensable instrument for utility suppliers. 

Deciding on the correct vendor for meter-to-cash options might be troublesome since there’s little details about them. This text supplies up to date options geared toward streamlining operations and bettering income seize for utility suppliers.

* Gartner Peer Insights (GPI) was the evaluate platform for our evaluation because it was the platform the place most of those distributors had a presence.

** Although Infosys’ quite a few companies & merchandise have been effectively represented in GPI, its providing for utilities was not represented.

How we selected these distributors

There’s a optimistic correlation between the distributors’ income and the worker workforce. Thus, we deal with firms with 50+ workers on LinkedIn. We ranked them in line with their worker dimension, besides ActiveBatch and Redwood RunMyJobs; that are among the many sponsors of AIMultiple.

Meter to Money Options Analyzed

ActiveBatch

With ActiveBatch’s deployment throughout blended IT environments, companies can improve operational effectiveness when adopting the platform. ActiveBatch supplies a flexible, policy-guided construction that permits IT departments to propel digital change all through the corporate. By automating recurring duties, the ActiveBatch workflow administration instrument grants IT items the capability to report each motion, modification, and occasion historical past, making certain profound perception and holistic management throughout the group. 

That includes instantaneous alerts for all related workflows and techniques, ActiveBatch is a unified dashboard, facilitating the commentary and administration of automated operations all through your mixed digital panorama. ActiveBatch’s automation platform emphasizes safety and spans your complete group. Consequently, any modifications wanted for jobs or plans tied to a consumer account might be made by simply updating the consumer account object, eliminating the necessity for repeated modifications to particular person jobs or plans.

Redwood RunMyJobs

Utilities aiming to boost their course of automation have adopted Redwood RunMyJobs, which seamlessly integrates processes throughout all enterprise purposes, minimizing dangers in invoicing, billing, and monetary administration.

Redwood’s advanced cloud-based automation platform supersedes typical automation present in ERP techniques or normal RPA. Particularly tailor-made for complete processes like meter-to-cash, RunMyJobs ensures a steady possession chain from meter studying to bill supply.

With RunMyJobs, utilities profit from a unified course of pathway that overrides current segmented integrations. This eradicates the necessity for knowledge cross-checks and guide changes. Furthermore, Redwood minimizes human-related errors and enterprise disruptions. This streamlines course of administration, guaranteeing constant and exact billing.

FortisBC, Canada’s main public utility supplier, depends on Redwood for exact and well timed billing to its huge buyer base. By integrating Redwood, FortisBC unified over 65 completely different inside and exterior techniques into one cohesive enterprise answer, making certain seamless end-to-end knowledge administration. With Redwood RunMyJobs’ deployment at FortisBC, they generated and dispatched 50,000 correct payments promptly.

WNS Digital Meter to Money Options

WNS collaborates with utility firms to boost the end-user expertise within the meter-to-cash course of, which spans from meter setup to money assortment. This enhancement is powered by digital expertise and knowledge analytics. Their inclusive Meter-to-Money-as-a-Service (M2CaaS) answer permits utility companies to intensify buyer loyalty, reduce down service prices, and enhance income, paving the way in which for a extra versatile enterprise construction. 

The WNS has a group of over 4,000 trade professionals overseeing the client expertise, delivering outcomes for greater than 35 million residential and enterprise prospects. They do that utilizing an intensive and digital-first utility dashboard that covers numerous channels.

Key Components of WNS M2CaaS Providing:

• Digital meter-to-cash
• Amazon Alexa
• Robotic Course of Automation (RPA)
• Sensible collections powered by analytics
• Digital maturity benchmark
• Final result-based finance and accounting, and procurement options

Infosys Utilities

Infosys Utilities presents recommendation and options associated to web metering, aiming to boost the dependability and effectivity of energy utility firms. They help organizations in integrating knowledge from each bidirectional and Time-Of-Use (TOU) meters which might be paired with photo voltaic panels and wind turbine techniques. This ensures exact information of electrical energy utilization and the quantity despatched again to the facility grid, selling well timed invoicing.

Determine 1: Infosys Utilities

Supply: Infosys ¹

SDG Group

Using SDG companies allows utility and power suppliers to harness cutting-edge expertise, giving them deeper insights into their prospects through analytics. This leads to extra environment friendly enterprise operations, subsequently chopping down operational bills. 

SDG presents the Meter-to-Money answer, mixing its prowess with a variety of buyer companies, together with account administration, dealing with exceptions, collections, and knowledge evaluation. This technique is crafted to scale back preliminary prices and deployment time, whereas making certain adaptability to market shifts and regulatory modifications. It additionally integrates analytical companies, equivalent to debt and fraud analytics.

Utilihive

Utilihive’s integration platform as a service (iPaaS) presents a sturdy suite tailor-made for utilities to refine and handle each section of operations, from sensible meter knowledge to billing. With a versatile and extremely scalable integration framework, it helps instantaneous knowledge synchronization and coordination from diverse sources like sensible meters, IoT gadgets, operational techniques, and enterprise platforms. 

The platform’s user-friendly interface and low-code setup enable companies to craft and set intricate processes and rules, making knowledge translation and validation extra streamlined.

Utilihive supplies utilities and their companions with a complete assortment of a library of pre-configured integration purposes, facilitating automation of the meter-to-cash course of. This assortment incorporates predefined integration flows tailor-made for well-liked sensible metering and grid processes, which might be customized utilizing the Utilihive (F)Lowcode DSL. 

Cogsdale’s Meter To Money Administration 

Cogsdale’s Meter To Money Administration software program allows utilities to precisely monitor consumption, generate and ship out invoices, obtain immediate funds from prospects, and guarantee dependable income acknowledgment. Cogsdale’s Meter to Money Administration instrument aids Utility Service suppliers in acquiring on the spot knowledge on consumption and billing, streamlining workflow processes, and changing intricate knowledge into user-friendly insights for all group members. 

What are meter-to-cash options?

Meter-to-cash is a complete course of encompassing meter studying, billing, fee assortment, and income administration. In essence, it represents the journey from the second a utility is used to the purpose the place the corporate receives fee for the service. This contains each {hardware} options like sensible meters and software program options that monitor meter utilization from each sensible and conventional utilization measurement gadgets.

Advantages of Implementing Meter-to-Money Options

1. Operational Effectivity

By automating the meter studying and billing processes, companies can scale back human error, streamline operations, and guarantee well timed income assortment.

2. Enhanced Buyer Satisfaction

Correct billing and clear processes result in elevated belief and satisfaction amongst prospects.

3. Monetary Insights

These options usually come outfitted with analytics instruments, providing precious insights into consumption patterns, income developments, and potential monetary bottlenecks.

Deciding on the Proper Meter-to-Money Answer for Your Enterprise

1. Perceive Your Wants

Earlier than diving into the seller choice, define your particular wants. Do you require an answer that caters to an enormous client base or a distinct segment viewers?

2. Scalability is Key

Your chosen answer ought to develop with your enterprise. Make sure the system can deal with a rise in workload as your buyer base expands.

3. Safety Concerns

With the rise of cyber threats, a safe meter-to-cash answer is non-negotiable. The software program ought to adhere to trade requirements and have common safety updates.

4. Integration Capabilities

The brand new system ought to seamlessly combine together with your present infrastructure, be it CRM instruments, ERP techniques, or different legacy software program.

5. Vendor Popularity

Errors in meter to money immediately affect both revenues or buyer satisfaction. Due to this fact robustness and maturity of the answer are crucial.

What are the weaknesses of meter-to-cash options?

Excessive Preliminary Prices

Implementing a full meter-to-cash answer, particularly when introducing sensible meters and AMI, might be very expensive. The fee contains not solely the expertise itself but additionally coaching and potential infrastructure modifications.

Expertise Integration Challenges

Utilities usually have legacy techniques in place. Integrating new meter-to-cash options with these older techniques might be complicated and time-consuming, and should result in knowledge inconsistency points.

Knowledge Privateness and Safety

With the digital transformation comes the chance of knowledge breaches. Utilities have to speculate considerably in cybersecurity measures to guard buyer knowledge and guarantee compliance with rules.

Complexity in Price Constructions

With superior metering, utilities can implement extra complicated charge constructions, equivalent to time-of-use pricing. Whereas this may be helpful, it can be complicated for purchasers and should result in billing disputes.

Operational Disruptions

Implementing new techniques could result in momentary disruptions in operations. If not managed effectively, this can lead to billing errors and buyer dissatisfaction.

Upkeep Prices

Sensible meters and AMI techniques have upkeep wants. Over time, these techniques can change into out of date, requiring upgrades or replacements.

Buyer Resistance

Prospects would possibly resist the implementation of sensible meters attributable to considerations about privateness, potential well being dangers, or just resistance to vary.

Dependence on Expertise

Within the occasion of system failures or technological glitches, billing, and money assortment may very well be considerably impacted, probably affecting a utility’s income stream.

Expertise Hole

With the adoption of latest expertise, there’s a want for expert personnel to handle, preserve, and analyze the techniques. Discovering or coaching such personnel generally is a problem for a lot of utilities.

Knowledge Administration and Evaluation

With AMI and sensible meters, utilities can entry huge quantities of knowledge. Effectively managing and extracting significant insights from this knowledge might be difficult.

Regulatory Challenges

In some areas, regulatory approval is perhaps required to implement sure meter-to-cash options or to regulate charge constructions. This will decelerate the adoption course of.

Infrastructure Vulnerability

As utilities transfer in the direction of extra related options, there’s an elevated threat of bodily infrastructure assaults or sabotage.

Exterior Hyperlinks

1. “Offering net metering services to retail customers” Infosys.