Archive for the ‘Billing’ Category

http://youtu.be/aOwl5Fjpwnw

Junifer Systems, the global provider of leading back office billing solutions for the utility industry, has been selected after a competitive tendering process to provide its flagship Utility Billing system to one of the largest electricity and gas distribution companies in New Zealand.

The Junifer Utility CIS system is a modular end to end customer management and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered by both legacy utility systems and the new requirements resulting from the industry wide Smart Grid rollout programmes.

The unique framework underpinning the system enables specific and complex business requirements to be delivered in short timescales. The ease of use and adaptability of the software ensures that the end customer accrues a quick return on investment and gets a ‘best of breed’ solution to support current and future billing requirements.

The Junifer system will interface with 3rd party systems using web services to provide day state management and consumption data. Bill processes and calculations will be streamlined and optimised so that bill production time is reduced from days to a matter of hours.

The deployment will initially focus on electricity GXP and gas installation billing, with electricity installation billing to follow soon after.

Saul Nurtman, Managing Director for Junifer Systems said:

“The selection of Junifer Systems by such a well established company as Powerco to provide an integral component of their business systems represents an endorsement of the Junifer Utility CIS platform in the utilities industry. We are very excited about this opportunity and also the potential to grow the business in the Asia Pacific region”

Dave Hill, Programme Manager for Powerco said

“The flexibility of the Junifer product was a major factor in our solution selection process. With multiple utility types, and regional variations to billing rules, the ability to adapt the solution to quite complex billing requirements was essential. The Junifer team were highly responsive to evolving requirements, and added a lot of value to the process of process definition”.

About Powerco
Powerco is New Zealand’s second largest electricity and gas distribution company. Their network area spreads across the upper central and lower central North Island servicing approximately 420,000 consumers representing 46% of gas connections and 16% of electricity connections in New Zealand.

About Junifer Systems
Headquartered in London, Junifer Systems provides complete Customer Information Systems (CIS) to the utility industry, specialising in billing systems for Smart Meter deployments.
For more details please visit www.junifersystems.com

Media Contact:
Lindsay Spencer
Tria Nomina
T: +44 (0) 870 850 2157
E: lindsay.spencer@trianomina.com

Junifer Systems, the global provider of leading back office solutions for the utility industry, has been selected after a competitive tendering process to provide its flagship Utility CIS to E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business.

Junifer Systems’ Utility CIS is a modular end-to-end customer information and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered by both legacy utility systems and the new requirements resulting from industry wide „Smart Meter‟ rollout programmes. The system has the capability to process „Smart Meter‟ consumption records as soon as they are presented to the system. The Junifer Utility CIS platform enables the Utility to offer innovative products, provide its customers with a better understanding of their energy consumption and ultimately help to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Junifer Systems Utility CIS implementation at E.ON will consolidate multiple systems, automate existing manual processes, provide an integrated accounts receivables and collections capability and provide extensive management reports.

Paul FitzGerald, Sales & Marketing Director for Junifer Systems said: “Our scaleable, Utility CIS platform will receive information from E.ON’s smart meters on a daily basis and process the data immediately – this will provide E.ON customer care staff with a single and timely view of all information related to their customers. We are delighted that E.ON recognised the added value that could be accrued through use of the Junifer Utility CIS platform.”

Jeremy Bungey, Head of Community Energy in E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business, said: “What impressed us most about Junifer Systems was that their software is developed specifically to meet the dynamic needs of the utility industry. Junifer’s Utility CIS was very user friendly and from the first live demonstration we could see exactly how it would work within our business. Our customer services team envisages real benefits from the system’s data collection, billing, CRM and ticketing capabilities.”
E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business will be using Junifer’s Utility CIS to manage the delivery of its many large-scale decentralised energy projects across new build sites such as Maple Quay and Dalston Square in East London.

Decentralised energy is produced close to where it will be used, reducing transmission losses and lowering carbon emissions. Long term, it can offer competitive, stable pricing. For house builders, decentralised energy is the cost-effective means of achieving the mandatory Code for Sustainable Homes targets.

About Junifer Systems
Headquartered in London, Junifer Systems provides complete Customer Information Systems (CIS) to the utility industry, specialising in billing systems for Smart Meter deployments. For more details please visit www.junifersystems.com

Media Contact:
Lindsay Spencer
Tria Nomina
T: +44 (0) 870 850 2157
E: lindsay.spencer@trianomina.com

Flexible solutions for the transforming energy industry

CIBER, one of the world’s thirty largest IT consulting companies, has initiated the collaboration with Junifer Systems on the launch of a new customer information system (CIS) in the Nordic market. The new system has taken the market by storm with a much lower entry-level pricing and greater flexibility than competing solutions.

According to the agreement, CIBER will be responsible for marketing, customization, integration, operation, as well as user training and support for Junifer in the Nordic countries.

“Primarily, we will be focusing on Swedish energy companies,” says Johan Barwén, Regional Manager at CIBER, who will be heading the new initiative.

“We have significant experience from systems integration and major project implementation. Some of our consultants have been actively working with electricity industry deregulation since 1996 and many others have over twenty years of industry experience. In addition, we add a proven project methodology that leads to minimized project risks”.

“We are excited about our partnership with CIBER. Their skills, experience and understanding of the local electricity market is unparalleled,” says Paul FitzGerald, Sales Director at Junifer Systems Ltd.

UK based Junifer Systems develops industry-specific business systems for electricity and telecommunications, but also for gas, water, waste management, and other utilities.

Unlike the majority of utility companies’ ageing existing applications, Junifer provides unprecedented opportunities to address the rapidly changing needs of an industry characterized by restructuring, increased competition, deregulation, and increasingly stringent regulatory compliance requirements.

“The system is scalable to fit both small and larger businesses. In addition, it is developed using Microsoft .Net, which means cost efficiency, short development times and sustainability,” says Johan Barwén.

For the utility (gas, water, electricty and waste) operator, the Junifer CIS & Billing products enable them to process the significant increase in data volumes (compared with the traditional utility billing estimate model) and also provides the business with a flexible, scalable and cost effective solution on which the business can build it’s unique offering.

For more information, please contact:

Johan Barwén, Business Unit Manager CIBER AB
+46 708-44 10 72
johan.barwen@ciber.com

Paul FitzGerald, Sales Director Junifer Systems Ltd
+353 87 9926723
paul.fitzgerald@junifersystems.com

About Ciber
IT consultancy CIBER Sweden AB, with approximately 150 employees are part of the global oraganisation Ciber Inc., with approximately 8500 employees and 1.2 billion dollars in turnover. Swedish customers are major banks, insurance companies and several telecommunication companies. CIBER also have assignments in the energy industry, government, logistics, trade and manufacturing industries.

CIBER provides specialist competencies in a number of areas, from business strategists to developers and testers / test leader. This means that CIBER can help their clients from strategy, via realization to maintenance.
Headquartered in Stockholm, with regional offices in Malmö and Sundsvall. See www.ciber.se

About Junifer
The Junifer Systems team has utilised it’s strong background in the complex, large transaction volume Telecomms billing sector to provide highly efficient, flexible and cost effective back-office solutions for the utilities market. The Junifer Product suite provides a complete end to end CIS and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered both by the legacy utility systems and what Junifer believes will be tomorrow’s “Smart Meter” billing requirements for utilities. For more information on Junifer Systems, please visit www.junifersystems.com
Headquartered in London, UK.

Building the Automated Meter Infrastructure involves a lot more than just installing a Smart Meter. You have to analyse the existing grid infrastructure and topography. The right solution for one grid is not necessary the best one for all grids. There are a lot of communication techniques to choose from and the best choice depends on where the delivery site is located. It’s also wise to think about your employees. Will they be able to handle all meter- and terminal changes etc. by themselves or do you need to hire an entrepreneur to do the job?

Before you start you need to find at least one lawyer or consultant that will help you with the contract text just in case if something goes wrong during the rollout project. There are a lot of good consultants with experience from other rollout projects that will be able to help you.

PLANNING THE ROLLOUT
It takes more time than you expect!
When you set up the schedule for your project it is best not to be too time optimistic. There will always be certain metering points that just don’t want to communicate. You will find problems you didn’t expect or think of when you started. So add some extra time in the project schedule from the start.

WHAT DO YOU NEED AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It can be wise to sit down in a group and discuss why you need to upgrade your grid in the first place. I suggest that you learn about the User Story technique that briefly works like this:

On the front page of a card, continue these 3 sentences.

As a …
I want to …
In order to …

On the back of the card you write down the confirmations, explaining how to validate that the user story has been implemented correctly.

Example 1:

As an end customer
I want my utility to report my households meter readings as hour values.
In order to analyse my consumption and save energy.

Confirmation

The end customer receives hour values on invoice.
If customer uses the Utility website, hour values are presented for the customer when values are quality assured.

Example 2:

As a grid owner
I want to be informed about a grid blackout as soon as possible
In order to locate the source of error and fix it

Confirmation

In case of blackout, the source of error will be displayed on a digital map.
In case of blackout, we will get information about delivery sites affected.

All user stories should be prioritized from Low, Medium and High.

When you have discussed all User Stories together in a group you have created a good study of what you are looking for which will make it easier for you to start searching for solutions.

SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE
It’s important to analyse the metering process when planning the system infrastructure. A normal situation is that the meter reads the consumption; the terminal saves it until the Collector collects them and finally the meter reading systems can save the meter readings/values with included time stamps. Some companies use a Meter value database that holds all meter readings/values for several years.
A Billing and Management system needs the meter readings to be able to create the invoice.
If you for example have lost communication with a meter and the metering system you need to send out a work order which means that you also need a Work Order Management system to create and keep track of the orders. All systems should be integrated so that you don’t have to do certain tasks more then once.
As you can see, it’s important to have an IT-unit with fantastic support working side by side with the project!

INFORMATION
Information is more important than you might think of. You need to inform your customers about the rollout. Why it’s done, how it works and when you will come to their delivery site etc. It’s also important to inform your staff. Not only the ones working in your unit, but the whole company. Make someone responsible for all information inside and outside the company.

Discuss this post by adding a comment!

Enerway invites contributors that would like to share information about their AMI projects. Describe for example how you planned it, what kind of people were involved in the project, were there any complications that forced you to find another solution and how is the situation today.
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StreamServe can convert almost any document format to another. With StreamServe you will be able to choose what channel you want to distribute the document in. Print, SMS, E-mail, Archive or Fax etc. StreamServe consists of a lot of separate modules that adds features to the installation.
By using your registered customer information you can personalize all documents which increase the customer loyalty and may improve customer response. It’s also great for creating documents that always is up to date with your company’s graphical design. It is managed by using centralized templates for each document type. The information in a document can be created by adding rules to the document input parameters.

StreamServe can be used for creating the utility customer bill. With information about the customer usage history, StreamServe creates a diagram over the past year or whatever you choose and adds it to the invoice. By using segmentation it is possible to fill the bill (or any other document) with information that is or could be of interest for the specific customer.

I have worked with StreamServes products in my profession and I think that it is a great product. I haven’t seen all modules in operation yet but I know that it is a very competent system. The only problem that I have come across is that there are too many modules available which make it difficult to know which one you need for creating certain functions. To be able to use everything that StreamServe can offer you need a lot of education from StreamServe or a good consultant.

A consultant firm with a lot of experience in StreamServe is KnowIT in Umeå for the Nordic countries.
www.knowit.se/en/Umea

Here comes a video presentation from Mike Balin, Senior Director at StreamServe

Visit StreamServe website
www.streamserve.com/industries/utilities/

MECOMS offers a metering and contract management system with a lot of features. Planning, Analysis, Contract & Billing, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Messaging module for functionality related to EDI, Forecasting, Settlement, Meter Data Collection, Finance and more.

Visit their website for more information
www.mecoms.com

If you are a MECOMS user or developer, sign in and tell us more about it!

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