This part­ner insight was authored by Dar­rell Maronde, Senior Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er for Redwood’s work­load automa­tion solutions.

As a mod­ern util­i­ty, you face a grow­ing num­ber of chal­lenges — ris­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions, evolv­ing tech­nolo­gies like the Inter­net of Things (IoT) and cloud com­put­ing, the always-grow­ing com­plex­i­ties of reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance and more. But meet­ing these chal­lenges isn’t impos­si­ble. It just requires a com­mit­ment to evolve and incor­po­rate the best automa­tion solu­tions for your par­tic­u­lar requirements. 

Under­tak­ing an automa­tion ini­tia­tive for util­i­ties starts with map­ping out its unique process­es, specif­i­cal­ly around meter-to-cash. By opti­miz­ing automa­tion of this end-to-end process, util­i­ties can dri­ve rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, increase cash flow and low­er oper­at­ing costs. 

Opti­miza­tion of this mul­ti-step process must account for smart meters, as well as the new data streams they cre­ate. In addi­tion, your plans must include lega­cy and cloud enter­prise appli­ca­tions and con­tainer­ized environments. 

Although this is a resource-inten­sive project, the ROI you’ll gain from these strate­gic invest­ments to stream­line meter-to-cash process­es jus­ti­fies the effort. Automat­ing your meter-to-cash deliv­ers mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits, includ­ing upgrad­ing billing and pay­ment process­es, min­i­miz­ing billing errors, accel­er­at­ing cash flow and enabling the busi­ness to boost prof­its through strate­gic purchasing. 

And these ben­e­fits trick­le through­out the orga­ni­za­tion and improve cus­tomer ser­vice, pro­vid­ing key com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in high­ly com­modi­tized mar­kets. From a per­son­nel per­spec­tive, your team can now spend less time babysit­ting billing process­es and more time on engag­ing, high-val­ue projects.

For mod­ern util­i­ty com­pa­nies, suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has nev­er been more crit­i­cal. Between ris­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions, oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by tech­nolo­gies like IoT and cloud com­put­ing and the always-grow­ing com­plex­i­ties of reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, util­i­ties must evolve their process­es or lose busi­ness to com­peti­tors that do. 

Trans­for­ma­tion is eas­i­er said than done. Util­i­ties rely on refin­ing meter-to-cash process­es to dri­ve rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, increase cash flow and low­er oper­at­ing costs. But, those process­es typ­i­cal­ly include hun­dreds of steps and sys­tems. Smart meters remove some of the man­u­al effort involved in meter-to-cash but also intro­duce new data streams that add to exist­ing com­plex­i­ty. Add that data influx to the dif­fi­cul­ties of inte­grat­ing sys­tems across lega­cy and cloud solu­tions and con­tainer­ized envi­ron­ments, and it’s no sur­prise opti­miz­ing meter-to-cash process­es con­tin­ues to be a challenge. 

How Run­MyJobs is trans­form­ing automa­tion for utilities

Util­i­ties look­ing to improve their work­load automa­tion have imple­ment­ed Run­MyJobs by Red­wood to con­nect and coor­di­nate every process across any enter­prise appli­ca­tion to mit­i­gate risks in invoic­ing, billing, pay­ment and debt man­age­ment processes.

Redwood’s unique, cloud-native automa­tion and orches­tra­tion plat­form replaces out­dat­ed or lim­it­ed automa­tion, often found in ERP sys­tems or tra­di­tion­al RPA. Run­MyJobs is a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion designed to han­dle end-to-end process­es like meter-to-cash that cre­ate a chain of own­er­ship from the time a meter is read to when the invoice is delivered.

When using Run­MyJobs, util­i­ties gain a sin­gle hor­i­zon­tal process flow that runs across exist­ing ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tions, elim­i­nat­ing cross-ref­er­enc­ing of data across sys­tems and man­u­al cal­cu­la­tions and rec­on­cil­i­a­tions. Red­wood also elim­i­nates the cost­ly impact of human errors while min­i­miz­ing busi­ness dis­rup­tion. It’s easy to suc­cess­ful­ly man­age and exe­cute process­es with­out inter­rup­tions, ensur­ing that billing is deliv­ered con­sis­tent­ly and accurately.

Mod­ern util­i­ties can expand automa­tion beyond meter-to-cash

By imple­ment­ing a com­pre­hen­sive, cloud-based work­load automa­tion solu­tion, util­i­ties can take their automa­tion beyond meter-to-cash. Run­MyJobs empow­ers util­i­ties to stream­line busi­ness oper­a­tions, mon­i­tor and visu­al­ize process­es and orches­trate process­es across hybrid environments. 

With Red­wood, util­i­ty com­pa­nies can seam­less­ly coor­di­nate and inte­grate lega­cy oper­a­tions, data, OS activ­i­ty and web API inter­ac­tions to inte­grate with any sys­tem, appli­ca­tion and technology.

Lead­ing util­i­ties stream­line billing and improve cus­tomer service

Red­wood works with some of the largest util­i­ties around the world to auto­mate their meter-to-cash process and improve their cus­tomer experience. 

For­tis­BC, Canada’s largest pub­lic util­i­ty com­pa­ny, depends on Red­wood to con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er accu­rate bills to its mil­lions of cus­tomers. With Red­wood, For­tis­BC rec­on­ciled 65+ inter­nal and exter­nal inter­faces into a sin­gle enter­prise solu­tion, con­nect­ing and man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion flow end to end. The very first day Run­MyJobs went live at For­tis­BC, they pro­duced 50,000 bills, each accu­rate and sent out on time. Learn more about how Red­wood worked with For­tis­BC to improve its billing and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in this case study.

Anglian Water, a Unit­ed King­dom water ser­vice provider employ­ing 5,000 peo­ple and pro­duc­ing 16,000 invoic­es every day, also turned to Red­wood to mod­ern­ize their meter-to-cash process. Before adopt­ing Red­wood, Anglian Water strug­gled with both mon­i­tor­ing issues in real time and attempts to mit­i­gate the result­ing oper­a­tional errors — plus the high call cen­ter vol­ume from unhap­py customers.

Anglian Water select­ed Run­MyJobs to solve these chal­lenges, using the cloud-based solu­tion to con­nect their process­es and pro­vide the vis­i­bil­i­ty need­ed to improve oper­a­tions. Red­wood dash­boards dis­play real-time sta­tus of every busi­ness process, pro­vid­ing alerts and noti­fi­ca­tions if some­thing goes wrong. A pre­dic­tive SLA noti­fies Anglian of any errors before dead­lines are missed, so they can be resolved before ser­vice is impact­ed. Anglian Water is now ranked num­ber one in a region­al eval­u­a­tion of water ser­vice providers, a sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­i­tive advan­tage that net­ted them a finan­cial reward.

For­tis­BC and Anglian Water used Run­MyJobs to opti­mize their rev­enue flow, turn­ing invoic­es into cash more quick­ly, effec­tive­ly and accu­rate­ly. The results: greater cash flow, more mar­ket pow­er and bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice. Wit­ness the pow­er of work­load automa­tion with Run­MyJobs: Book a demo.

Dar­rell Maronde is the Senior Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er for Redwood’s work­load automa­tion solu­tions. He has more than 15 years of prod­uct mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence with on-prem and SaaS soft­ware, includ­ing solu­tions for IT and operations.