As we enter the world of fully smart energy systems, the volume of data that energy suppliers manage is ever increasing. With that increasing volume comes the challenge of managing greater and greater complexity with tariffs, renewables and customer service requirements.
Over the past 5 or so years retailers have been searching for technology that can replace rigid legacy systems and provide the flexibility and innovation that their customers – both domestic and commercial – demand. The start of the evolution was via the new billing system providers who promised Customer Information Systems (CIS) that could serve the customer end to end, as well as handling the complex pricing engines needed for flexible tariffs and I & C customers.
However, the world of energy never stands still, and the demands placed on these systems has led to the development of a full ecosystem of additional technology providers – all layering additional services and products on top (or around) the core billing platform.
This ‘layering’ of systems allows retailers to flex and deliver that much demanded innovation for their customers, but it also provides additional complexity to manage. And with added complexity comes added cost. The wide array of systems all have their own data needs, APIs and ways of interacting with each other. Such complexity means that creating a cohesive data reality is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
But why does that matter?
Meter to cash – to settlement
Traditional billing systems offer ‘meter to cash’ data flows – a way of taking metering data and converting it into a customer bill that means that suppliers can balance the books. However, as the volume of metering data increases, with changes such as Market Wide Half Hourly Settlement in the UK, and the types of products that customer demand change, more and more system dependencies are being created to generate the flows that suppliers need.
Suppliers might have a billing platform, a pricing engine, trading and forecasting system, all overlaid with a customer facing customer relationship management system or portal.
That means that reconciling the numbers, not just for billing, but also for the critical element of settlement, has become more and more complex. And settlement accuracy is vital for the bottom line – especially in light of the planned shortening of the UK settlement window from 14 to 4 months through the MHHS programme.
Creating one view of the customer
Multiple platforms don’t just create complexity when balancing the numbers – it can also create challenges when managing customers. Having data stored across multiple siloed storage points means that resolving issues when they occur (which they will) can involve looking across multiple different systems – and this means that having an accurate view of the customer is almost impossible. Customers now seek far more personalisation, and with different demands – whether that be a large Industrial and Commercial or residential customer – and having a consolidated view across all their products, services and billing is critical.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen great advances in integrating customer focused CRM’s and other front ends with complex billing systems, delivering better and better customer experience. But another layer adds another place where data can misalign, causing problems further down the track.
Creating a harmonised data ecosystem has become the new challenge.
In searching for this holy grail retailers often feel that they have to start from scratch and rebuild from their billing system upwards. But billing system upgrades are painful, expensive long-term projects with complex migrations, and often involve writing off capex spend whilst tying up valuable resource. With the pace of change across the energy ecosystem happening so rapidly, there is no guarantee that a new billing system won’t face similar challenges in 3 years’ time, with retailers having to go through the whole thing again.
Creating a holistic customer view
What suppliers need is to create an end-to-end data flow – with the confidence that all the inputs in delivers a correct version of the data out. This holy grail scenario gives the whole retail business the right information to work efficiently and effectively – traders have the right information to enable better forecasting and hedging strategies; operations can manage metering and meter data flows efficiently to allow for accurate settlement; and billing and customer services have accurate customer information at their fingers tips to deliver best in class customer service. Fundamentally, customers can access the innovative products and services they demand, whether that’s through agile consumer tariffs, demand side response activity for large I&C businesses, or renewable tariffs that better enable the transition to a net zero future.
One version of the truth
So, what’s the answer, and how can energy retailers and utilities avoid complex migration projects every few years and realise the inherent value in their data?
Astral Tech’s Customer Data Layer (CDL) allows for the creation of a unified energy data model. It eliminates fragmented data and complexity, ensuring every customer gets the clarity they need, no matter where their data comes from or how they want to use it.
The data layer gathers and manages data from across the energy ecosystem, providing the ‘single view of truth’ that most energy suppliers and utilities are missing. This unified view can be used to deliver customer self-serve, operational performance optimisation and, when combined with the Energy Data Management module, provides a market leading consumption data analytics platform.
By using this ‘one version of the truth’ utilities and retailers can successfully navigate the must-win battles of customer identity management, data quality assurance, authorisation and access management. Whilst at the same time delivering a platform for innovation and customer service excellence.