Paying Electric Bill with Credit Card

Paying electric bill is something routine that we need to do it every month. Well, it depends on your electric provider whether they are issuing the bill monthly or quarterly. If you noticed, every years, the electric company becomes more strict in deadline of payments. If you pass the deadline without paying the bill on time, in 1 or 2 days, you will get a notice of disconnection right away. Disregarding this notice will lead into disconnection electricity.

As electricity becomes an important part of our life, we do not want the disconnection to happen. That is why I am suggesting you to enroll your electric bill payment through credit cards. You can avoid the hassle of going to payment center or ATM every month to make a payment of your bill. However, you must check with your credit cards providers if they have setup up an agreement with the electric company to do payments through credit card. If you are not sure about it, you can always look for credit cards review available. You try to compare the providers that will fit best to what you need. Some credit card providers even give a cash back when you are using it for payments, including the payments of electric bill. In the end, it is just like having a discount by paying your electric bill through credit cards.

Closing of Cashiers – Important for Customer Management System!

In Customer Management System, especially in utility companies, the process of cashier closing is important. At the end of the day, all cashier (whether online of offline) should be closed and do not receive any payment anymore. A good customer management system could detect any unbalance money movement when the cashier is closed. How?
Let say that there are 3 cashiers: cashier A, B, and C. At the end of the day, all money received should be transferred to one cashier (say cashier A) to deposit it to the bank.

Cashier B when declaring that the money is moved to cashier A, a printed money out movement receipt/report should be printed by the system on terminal of cashier B. Cashier A when declaring that he/she received money from cashier B will let the system in his/her terminal to print money in movement receipt/report. This will create balance. The printed receipt/report is only for documentation signed by both cashiers involved. If the declaring of money out and in are not done, system will refuse to be closed because there are money “hanging” somewhere. The same case when cashier C will move the money to cashier A.

By having this money in/out reports, the manager of finance or commercial office will be easy to monitor the movement of money. It would be great if the system is centralized so that the manager can always check the amount of money collected and movements between cashiers.

Then, how about implementing 24/7 payment system through online website or ATM. Well, this will be a different procedure to handle that will be discussed in next blogposts. Watch out for it.

Knowledge Management in Project Implementation

Project Implementation, especially in Utility System Project Implementations, requires specialist consultants to do the tasks. Each consultant has his/her role and responsibility to carry out the project implementation. Mostly, there is no overlap knowledge to minimize the cost of consultants in the project.

The situation like above creates a fragile project environment if a one consultant is absent due to any reasons. The project could be affected or worst it could be stopped temporarily if the consultant who are absent has the knowledge that could create a bottle neck in the project implementation.

This is where knowledge management should be considered in project implementation. There should be another person or consultant that could handle the task if a certain consultant is absent. Of course the result could not be maximum as the replacement consultant is a current consultant working on the project implementation handling other area. Knowledge management could be implemented by assigning a buddy consultant (from different area) to each consultant (say consultant A). The buddy consultant should attend all meetings attended by the consultant A to make sure he/she knows the progress and some tasks done by consultant A. This ways, a buddy consultant could handle temporary some tasks if consultant A is absent temporarily?

Another question is that... how if consultant A is absent permanently because of resigning? Well, a good human resource department in a company should require 1 month advance notice for a consultant to resign. This time could be enough for a company to hire another consultant with the same or similar profile.

Upgrade into Automatic Meter Reading (AMR)

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) is becoming a trend in utility company. Various vendors are offering nice features of AMR. However utility company should consider again if they need or if they are ready to implement this automatic meter reading. I have seen 2 out of 5 utility companies that I visited are implementing AMR but they are not benefiting much of the functionalities.

AMR has a functionality that transmits the meter reading automatically to billing system using ways of communications technologies. Either using a simple phone line, or using other telecommunication technologies like LAN, GPS, wireless, satellites, etc. From the 1 of the companies that I mentioned are not fully utilized the AMR because they just do not have reliable telecommunication technologies. In the end, they need to send readers to read the meter manually. The other 1 is not able to make an interface between AMR to the billing system. Thus, what the use of having AMR then?

Utility company should evaluate their conditions before spending money to upgrade meters to automatic meter reading. At least, here are the points that should be focussed on:

1. Within the budget? Conduct Cost and Benefit Analysis. We know that AMR can bring a lot of benefits like on time reading, early detections of irregular consumptions, better monitoring off peak and peak consumptions, better monitoring for complex tariff computation, etc. But make sure the company can utilize all of them.
2. Have strong communication network.
3. Will be able to integrate to other systems (billing system, scada, meter fraud)
4. Human Resources are prepared with the technology. Only users that understand the system can benefit from AMR.

Standard Reports for Customer Management System in Utility Company

The module “Reporting or Management Information System” should provide comprehensive information concerning the Commercial activities necessary for the company’s management. The functions “Alarms” and “Inquiries” can serve this purpose.

Alarms serve to monitor selected indexes, which are important for the company’s management. The indexes have flag-shaped labels, whose colour changes depending on the reached index value according to pre-set limits. These alarms make it possible for the responsible employees to quickly establish what Commercial areas are trouble-free and, on the contrary, which ones present an unfavourable development allowing them to take the necessary measures.

Inquiries display comprehensible information about the selected Commercial management area of the Distribution Company and can be displayed in text or graphic form. Selecting information can be restricted to specific periods, query types and other conditions (the different types of queries are described later in this chapter).

To provide the necessary information, the module should use of the following queries:

1. METER READING PROGRESS
This query displays information about the service point-readings that have to be or have been processed by the readings module within the selected period. This query displays the number of service points planned for reading in the selected period, the number of service points for which a theoretical reading date has been Generated, the number of already read service points, as well as the ratio Readings – theoretical reading date, and the ratio Performed readings – total number of planned readings.

2. METER READING QUALITY
This query displays the results of the readings performed in a specific period of time. The first to appear is the total number of readings with the respectively Generated theoretical reading date. It also specifies the number of real and exceptional readings, of not-performed readings due to customer absence, and the total number of not-performed readings.

3. DAILY AND MONTHLY BILLING
This query displays the daily billing course, namely the number of billed supplies as of a specific day, billed amount usage, the advance billed amount, the ratio Supply billed by usage estimation – total billed usage.

4. MONTHLY BILLING
This query displays the following monthly billing information: number of billed supplies, total billed usage in local currency, volume of billed technical units in local currency. This query has two windows. The second one contains the billing details: the total arrears/overpayments, the usage billed amount, the billed fixed charge, the billed miscellaneous charges, the VAT included in the prices and the advance billed amount.

5. ANALYSIS OF REALISED BILLING
This query allows viewing the information once the billing has taken place. This information includes the total number of processed supplies, the number of supplies billed according to reading and according to estimation, the number of exception bills, the total billed usage, the total billed amount and the billed advances.

6. ANALYSIS BY TYPE OF BILLING OF ISSUED PD
This query displays all the information concerning the types of bill rules other than energy usage bills, indicates temporary supply bills, contract charges, frauds, miscellaneous charges, instalments, advance collection, deposits, etc. within a specific period.

7. BILLING EXCEPTIONS PROGRESS
This query display the exceptions registered in a specific period of time, their settlement and the average settlement time.

8. ANALYSIS OF REALISED PAYMENTS
This query displays the initial (at the beginning of the monitored period) amount of the outstanding bills, of the bills sent for collection in the course of the period, of the bills collected in the course of the period, as well as the outstanding bills balance at the end of the monitored period.

9. COLLECTION LENGTH
This query allows monitoring the duration of the different collection stages for the different bill types in days.

10. DEBT ANALYSIS I.
This query allows monitoring the outstanding claims (debts) in the different bad payers management stages, namely as for their number, percentile constitution or amounts in local currency within a specific period of time.

11. DEBT ANALYSIS II.
This query allows monitoring the percentile development (growth or reduction) of claims, namely as for their number and amounts in local currency within a specific period of time.

12. DELINQUENT ACCOUNT ANALYSIS
This query allows monitoring the bad payers management process and its effects, i.e. the number of disconnection notices, disconnections, reconnections, bad claims, legal recoveries and deprecations.

13. COMMERCIAL CYCLE LENGHT
This query displays the average duration of the whole “reading, billing, sending for collection and collection” Commercial cycle within a specific period of time.

14. CONTACTS ANALYSIS
This query allows monitoring the development of the number of contacts as for their settlement time, speed, type (justified and unjustified) and their duration.

15. SERVICE ORDERS PROGRESS
This query displays the number of service orders, specifying the number of unsettled orders at the beginning of the monitored period, the increase of new orders, the amount of orders settled and canceled within the period, as well as the promptness of their settlement and their duration.

16. REQUESTS PROGRESS
This query displays information concerning the supply requests within a specific period of time. The issue here is, for instance, the following information: number of unsettled requests at the beginning of the period; number of filed, settled and cancelled requests within this period; the average number of settlement days and the duration of the requests in the system, as well as the number of unsettled requests at the end of the period.

17. CONTRACTS PROGRESS MONITORING
This query displays information about the number of valid power supply contracts available in the system at the beginning of the monitored period; the number of contracts created, edited and terminated within this period, and the number of valid contracts at the end of the period.

18. STATISTICS OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY
This query provides information about the amount on-line operations performed at the different Commercial offices, monitoring the different types of Commercial activities both in absolute and percentile expression.

Customer Service Defined In Electricity Company

There are many ways to defined good customer service. In electricity company, the customer service should be define to achieve the main goal, which is to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to customers. This main goal will result into several aspects that the company should pay attention for.

1. Giving best services to paying customers. Obviously, these customers deserve better services that non-paying customer. It is important that the company implements Customer Rating giving better rating for those who are paying the bills on time.

2. Warn about the disconnection. Non-paying customers are eligible for disconnection. However, the warning should be given before disconnection. Detailed company policies should be defined about non-paying customers. Special campaign can be launched to socialize the policies to customers. Non-paying customers are also have the right to be warned before any disconnections because electricity is one of the major necessities for daily life.

3. Find fraud connection and act immediately. Electricity fraud connection can result into network interruptions because of overload. Thus, company should find away to continuously find of customers with fraud connections, such as double connection and meter bypass. This step is to ensure that no network interruptions for paying customer because these illegal fraud connections.

Billing Exception or Anomaly in Customer Management System

a) What is a billing exception?
Billing exceptions are any abnormal situations for a supply detected during the billing process. These abnormal situations may cause improper billing of the supply or no billing at all. Thus, it becomes necessary to analyze and solve these inconsistencies before billing (with actual reading data or estimates) is performed.

b) What is the consequence of the abnormal situation?
Abnormal situations may cause improper billing of a supply.

c) What does the billing team do with the exception?
They have to analyze and solve the exceptions before billing it once and for all.
N.B: It more important to have quality resolution of exception, rather than the number of exceptions solved in a day.

Process for Bill Production and Delivery

INTRODUCTION
This process consists of the actions that are carried out to inform the customer the amount that he must pay for the utility supply and services that he receives from the Company.
The amount collectible to the customer is detailed in a bill. The bill contains information related to bill items related to the utility usage and services, payment balances, meter information and adjustments if any. For customers who have multiple services in his account, the collectible amount is summarized in a Statement of Account.
Bills are produced daily by batch process after the readings obtained daily from the field are uploaded into the Customer Management System. Upon production, the will immediately be enveloped, prepared and turned over for delivery to the Post Office or any third party courier. Data are also sent to bank for Direct Debit Arrangements.

RESPONSIBILITY
Print Centre Specialist
- Printing of files and summary report
- Preparation of boxes of documents for delivery
- Turn over of boxes to Post Office Contact Person

System Administrator
- Delivery of DD files to banks

REMARKS
Details and agreement about delivery of documents (bills, statements, customer letters, debt notices, disconnection notices, etc.) by the Post Office should be contained in the Memorandum of Agreement between the two parties.

INPUT
Bill information, Account data, Payment balance

OUTPUT
Bills, Statements, Direct Debit Files

OWNER OF THE PROCESS
Business Cycle and Systems Section

CLIENT
Post Office, Benefits.

PROVIDER
Customer Service Management