Within the utilities sector, the meter-to-cash course of is crucial for income technology and environment friendly operations. It entails quite a few intricate steps and methods. Meter-to-cash options have emerged as an indispensable instrument for utility suppliers.
Choosing the suitable vendor for meter-to-cash options could be troublesome since there may be little details about them. This text offers up to date options geared toward streamlining operations and bettering income seize for utility suppliers.
| Vendor | Evaluations* |
|---|---|
| ActiveBatch | 4.3/5.0 based mostly on 63 evaluations |
| Redwood RunMyJobs | 4.6/5.0 based mostly on 75 evaluations |
| WNS Digital Meter to Money Options | 4.6/5.0 based mostly on 15 evaluations |
| SDG Group | 4.4/5.0 based mostly on 37 evaluations |
| Infosys Utilities | 4.0/5.0 based mostly on 14 evaluations |
| Greenbird Utilitihive | 4.0/5.0 based mostly on 1 assessment |
| Cogsdale Meter To Money Administration | N/A |
* Gartner Peer Insights (GPI) was the assessment 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 had been nicely 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 give attention to corporations with 50+ staff on LinkedIn. We ranked them in keeping 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 combined IT environments, companies can improve operational effectiveness when adopting the platform. ActiveBatch offers a flexible, policy-guided construction that allows IT departments to propel digital change all through the corporate. By way of automating recurring duties, the ActiveBatch workflow administration instrument grants IT items the capability to document each motion, modification, and occasion historical past, making certain profound perception and holistic management throughout the group.
That includes instantaneous alerts for all linked workflows and methods, ActiveBatch is a unified dashboard, facilitating the remark and administration of automated operations all through your mixed digital panorama. ActiveBatch’s automation platform emphasizes safety and spans the complete group. Consequently, any modifications wanted for jobs or plans tied to a consumer account could 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 reinforce their course of automation have adopted Redwood RunMyJobs, which seamlessly integrates processes throughout all enterprise functions, minimizing dangers in invoicing, billing, and monetary administration.
Redwood’s superior cloud-based automation platform supersedes typical automation present in ERP methods or customary 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 totally different inside and exterior methods into one cohesive enterprise resolution, 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 corporations to reinforce 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) resolution permits utility companies to intensify buyer loyalty, lower down service prices, and enhance income, paving the best way for a extra versatile enterprise construction.
The WNS has a workforce of over 4,000 trade professionals overseeing the shopper expertise, delivering outcomes for greater than 35 million residential and enterprise clients. They do that utilizing a radical and digital-first utility dashboard that covers numerous channels.
Key Parts of WNS M2CaaS Providing:
- Digital meter-to-cash
- Amazon Alexa
- Robotic Course of Automation (RPA)
- Good collections powered by analytics
- Digital maturity benchmark
- Final result-based finance and accounting, and procurement options
Infosys Utilities
Infosys Utilities provides recommendation and options associated to internet metering, aiming to reinforce the dependability and effectivity of energy utility corporations. They help organizations in integrating knowledge from each bidirectional and Time-Of-Use (TOU) meters which can be paired with photo voltaic panels and wind turbine methods. This ensures exact data of electrical energy utilization and the quantity despatched again to the ability grid, selling well timed invoicing.
Determine 1: Infosys Utilities
Supply: Infosys 1
SDG Group
Using SDG companies allows utility and vitality suppliers to harness cutting-edge expertise, giving them deeper insights into their clients through analytics. This leads to extra environment friendly enterprise operations, subsequently slicing down operational bills.
SDG presents the Meter-to-Money resolution, mixing its prowess with a variety of buyer companies, together with account administration, dealing with exceptions, collections, and knowledge evaluation. This method is crafted to cut 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 strong suite tailor-made for utilities to refine and handle each part of operations, from sensible meter knowledge to billing. With a versatile and extremely scalable integration framework, it helps instantaneous knowledge synchronization and coordination from diversified sources like sensible meters, IoT units, operational methods, and enterprise platforms.
The platform’s user-friendly interface and low-code setup permit companies to craft and set intricate processes and rules, making knowledge translation and validation extra streamlined.
Utilihive offers utilities and their companions with a complete assortment of a library of pre-configured integration functions, facilitating automation of the meter-to-cash course of. This assortment comprises predefined integration flows tailor-made for widespread sensible metering and grid processes, which could 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 observe consumption, generate and ship out invoices, obtain immediate funds from clients, and guarantee dependable income acknowledgment. Cogsdale’s Meter to Money Administration instrument aids Utility Service suppliers in acquiring instantaneous knowledge on consumption and billing, streamlining workflow processes, and changing intricate knowledge into user-friendly insights for all workforce 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 observe meter utilization from each sensible and conventional utilization measurement units.
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 clients.
3. Monetary Insights
These options usually come outfitted with analytics instruments, providing useful insights into consumption patterns, income developments, and potential monetary bottlenecks.
Choosing 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 unlimited shopper base or a distinct segment viewers?
2. Scalability is Key
Your chosen resolution ought to develop with your corporation. 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 resolution 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 along with your present infrastructure, be it CRM instruments, ERP methods, or different legacy software program.
5. Vendor Status
Errors in meter to money instantly 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 resolution, particularly when introducing sensible meters and AMI, could be very expensive. The fee contains not solely the expertise itself but additionally coaching and potential infrastructure modifications.
Know-how Integration Challenges
Utilities usually have legacy methods in place. Integrating new meter-to-cash options with these older methods could be complicated and time-consuming, and should result in knowledge inconsistency points.
Information 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 Charge Buildings
With superior metering, utilities can implement extra complicated fee buildings, equivalent to time-of-use pricing. Whereas this may be helpful, it will also be complicated for purchasers and should result in billing disputes.
Operational Disruptions
Implementing new methods could result in non permanent disruptions in operations. If not managed nicely, this can lead to billing errors and buyer dissatisfaction.
Upkeep Prices
Good meters and AMI methods have upkeep wants. Over time, these methods can change into out of date, requiring upgrades or replacements.
Buyer Resistance
Prospects would possibly resist the implementation of sensible meters because of considerations about privateness, potential well being dangers, or just resistance to alter.
Dependence on Know-how
Within the occasion of system failures or technological glitches, billing, and money assortment may very well be considerably impacted, doubtlessly 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 methods. Discovering or coaching such personnel is usually a problem for a lot of utilities.
Information Administration and Evaluation
With AMI and sensible meters, utilities can entry huge quantities of knowledge. Effectively managing and extracting significant insights from this knowledge could be difficult.
Regulatory Challenges
In some areas, regulatory approval is likely to be required to implement sure meter-to-cash options or to regulate fee buildings. This could decelerate the adoption course of.
Infrastructure Vulnerability
As utilities transfer in the direction of extra linked options, there’s an elevated danger of bodily infrastructure assaults or sabotage.
Exterior Hyperlinks
- “Providing internet metering companies to retail clients” Infosys.