SAP

The typical legacy CIS is inflexible to changes and therefore any enhancement or functionality addition requires huge investment in terms of time and cost. Technologically, the old world CIS is a composite application that is made up multiple small and large applications running in coherence to achieve a required functionality. Not all granular applications are on the same technology making the integration more complex. Usually there are multiple areas where same data is maintained and therefore required to be consistent. A change to any one application becomes highly invasive and has a ripple impact to integrating applications. Hence there are serious costs and time investments in terms of massive code changes and re-testing and you have a dwindling expertise base in terms of skilled resources.

And how is the CIS non-scalable? With advent of new initiatives and technologies there are requirements for large scale data and complex processes adoption. For example, addition of interval metering data to a consumer set adds significant amount of data volume. This data volume can be almost 30 times more and as a result will impact almost every job processed. For example the metering and billing batches will require additional capacity to complete in the same batch window time. This cannot be achieved by only enhancing hardware. The platform needs to be scalable. Similarly, integration of newer applications say for AMI or to support industry data exchange in a deregulated environment requires complex processes to be adopted. Only a scalable platform can adopt such complicated process without impacting any existing processes.

Changing ownership structures in utilities is driving a whole lot of mergers, acquisitions and divisions. The existing CIS systems fail to address this change. These systems are not scalable to work post consolidation and are inflexible to be split under separate business functions.

Thus the old world technology platform is unable to provide the flexibility and scalability to meet the technical and business objectives of a utility. Additional time and cost investments can prolong the life of the old world CIS system, but these investments will be sunk once the platform is forced upon. Hence the earlier modernization is adopted; the better it is for the utility.

So what is the solution for modernization? The solution is to have an integrated customer care and billing platform that is highly flexible and scalable, would enhance customer service, increase efficiency of both front and back office operations, improve billing runs and help increase revenue collections. A scalable and flexible solution will enable utilities to be equipped for taking advantage of the opportunities required for these changes and new initiatives like AMI/Smart metering.

Package Applications today offer this modern integrated customer care and billing platform to utilities. Read the next part of this blog here to understand what all features does a package solution for the Utility Customer Care and Billing can provide.