Customer Service & Billing: A need to wake up?
Nordic utilities retailers, Results from an IDC Survey
A recent Logica-IDC survey of the Nordic region focused on around 100 small and medium utilities. It sought to discover if their existing Customer Service & Billing solutions were future-proof.
“When considering the future investments needed and the current economic reality, utilities will have to seek alternative approaches for delivery, such as cloud, to reduce the cost to serve, while offering better services.”
(IDC, Energy Insights, 2012)
Major findings from the survey included:
- There are many different local CS&B solutions deployed by Nordic utilities.
- The introduction of new services, regulations and operational efficiencies are the strongest motives for investments in new solutions.
- Nordic utilities prefer “Billing as a service” over “CRM as a service”.
- CS&B as a service (SaaS) is recognised as a viable option by one in every four Nordic utilities but lack of control and loss of competences are considered major barriers.
The Nordic Common Energy Market arrives in 2015 and it will bring with it significant change. Organisations that remain static:
- risk their business processes being unable to cope with issues like debt recovery of combined billing within the new market
- risk local solutions becoming obsolete if they cannot add new functionalities
- risk not being able to store, manage or capitalise on the huge amounts of data they generate
- risk a lack of knowledge about new technologies such as SOA which will hold them back from competing effectively.
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With so much change expected to take place across the energy market, utilities have a lot to consider if they are to remain competitive and customer-focused in the Common Nordic Market. There are some key areas to focus on:
- Market changes – Energy retailers must analyse how their business fits into this new future and identify both the risks and the opportunities.
- SaaS solutions – Utilities must be able to cope with the challenge of capital needs, new technology knowledge, quality improvements and meeting new market demands.
- Roadmaps – Engaging architecture re-foundation and building a roadmap of business timelines will help utilities prepare for the journey, providing the first milestone is in the near future.
- Skill stock take – The need to adapt internal IT skills to the new IT landscape and governance models.
Download document with survey conclusions and Logica’s point of view
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