Attention to Utility Company: When your meter data is not reliable

In some utility company, the meter information stored in billing system is not reliable. This situation could happen when utility company pays too much attention of customer ID or service ID or property ID or other ID to locate and identify the service. It means that when doing meter reading, the readers tends to look for those IDs instead of meter information. If your company is guilty of doing this activity, try to look on how many anomalies or exception related to meter reading. Either, the consumption is too high, too low, or considered as many meter turn overs. If the statistics show that the number of anomalies related to meter reading is high, most probably your utility company has no meter information updated in billing system.

One action to correct the meter information is by doing data gathering to obtain updated meter information. To make it worst is that only readers know how to locate the property based on ID. And most of the time, you will not want to allocate your readers to do data gathering that could take time as compared to normal reading. This can sacrifice the billing period that your company has set. Not to mention if the house is locked and the reader needs to wait.

One solution is to use other resources as surveyors and they will do sweeping the whole area. In order to make the sweeping efficient and they could link all the meter info to correct customer ID or other ID, a preliminary campaign should be done. A reader when doing normal reading should put sticker near the meter info and write related customer ID or whatever ID that the company wants to relate to. This way, the surveyor could link all the meter info gathered to the ID used in billing system.

Train the surveyor effectively so that the method of sweeping is done correctly and surveyor know the meter information to gather.

Take note on meter exchange done during the data gathering period. All meter exchange activities should be monitored and integrated with data gathering data to make sure that the data is always updated.

Archiving my files after Project Closing

My habit is to archive all my work in hard copy and soft copy after a certain project in utility company finishes. Currently, I put all the hard copy in my living room on a special cabinet full of books and papers resulted from my work. However, the past few days I have thinking to move those papers somewhere in my garage. Why? Because honestly, none of them are used by me. I never touched them in years. I usually browse the soft copy when I need something. And it is easier to find some keywords in soft copy. I do not want to throw it because I use it (even very rare) to teach some new personnel joining the team. It is better to show them in hard copy as I can make some notes and marks directly.

To pursue with the idea of putting them in my garage, I will need a new garage cabinets that can organize my paper so that I can easily index them for future use. I am going to have metal cabinets that can protect my papers against some disasters. Well, just want to be safe. I am not very choosy about the color but a silver color will look nice in my garage to suit the color of the wall.

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.