Top-Ten Must-Haves in Your CIS/UB Software
Your Customer Information and Utility Billing System (CIS/UB) software is the heart of your customer experience operations. It keeps track of your customers’ vital information, billing, and interactions with your team. When your customer information and utility billing system works effectively, it not only provides a great user experience but also helps your team provide exceptional customer experiences. But not all CIS/UB software is created equally. The best will have these top ten must-haves.
Must-have #1 Workflows
Workflows are a set of repeatable steps that standardize procedures so everyone knows how to complete that process. When these workflows are built into your CIS software, you can automate a process’s flow to reduce manual tasks, organize operations and increase productivity. Having these workflows saves time during day-to-day operations and when you’re training a new employee. Because your CIS/UB software’s workflows provide repeatable processes, you and your team can offer a standardized approach to serving your customers, no matter if the employee is a rookie or a veteran.
Must-have #2 Configurable At-a-Glance Screen
Workflows assist with processes, and configurable screens make those processes more efficient. CIS/UB software provides a great deal of data, but not all data is always needed. Configuring your screens (not customizing the code to surface required information) allows each utility to design at-a-glance information they use most often. Unlike customization, configuring a screen makes it easy to find what you need every time. When users have a better experience finding information, they can provide a better customer experience.
Must-have #3 Choose Your Fields
As an extension to the configurable nature of a strong CIS product, a user needs to choose the data they need to see. When your CIS software allows you to configure a screen with 30 additional fields of information and store it locally, you have tremendous freedom to capture the information you need specific to your community. As with all databases, fields are searchable, allowing the user to find the required data to provide fast, exceptional customer service.
Must-have #4 Reporting
It’s not enough to filter the data or to search for information; your CIS/UB software needs to generate and schedule reports. When your reporting tool can generate numerous out-of-the-box and custom reports in any format, you can create reports on billing and usage, billing exceptions, rate lists, consumption analysis, and so much more. With each report you generate, you can spot trends, view anomalies, and create short and long-term goals for your organization to streamline operations and maximize efficiency.
Must-have #5 Automation Engine
The benefit of any software is to perform mundane or complex tasks so that humans don’t have to. And having CIS software with an automation engine built in keeps your team from performing everyday, repetitive tasks that, over time, become frustrating. Think of all the time you can save and the errors you can prevent by automating repetitive tasks, not to mention the improvement in staff morale. When your CIS has an automation engine built in, you get back hours in your week that your team can use to perform other high-priority tasks that cannot be automated.
Must-have #6 Rate Structures
On any given street, your customers can be paying various rates. Simple, step, demand, tiered, and Time of Use (TOU) rates are just a few you can see on a utility bill. And with distributed energy becoming part of the mix, you now have to consider net billing and net metering. You end up with a complex rate structure that not every CIS software can handle. If your software can’t process complex rates, your team is required to input this information each month, and as mentioned in #5, software is supposed to save time, not give you more work. With best-of-breed software designed specifically for utilities, you can efficiently process complex rate structures and distributed energy billing.
Must-have #7 Net Billing/Net Metering
Distributed energy customers are changing the way utilities bill their customers. Because your customers are becoming “prosumers,” meaning producers and consumers of energy, utility consumption/production is a dynamic relationship with the power flowing both ways. With the beginning shift to prosumerism and more intelligent technology, utilities must determine the best way to charge these customers. No matter if you’re paying them wholesale rates(net billing) or retail rates(net metering), you need a CIS that can generate these rates, provide credits, and apply debits to the proper account. The NorthStar CIS distributed energy module can handle this kind of rate structure already, but many systems on the market today cannot.
Must-have #8 Meter Data
A utility cannot bill its customers if it cannot determine their consumption, and meters keep track of that data. More and more, utilities are moving away from predictive to actual consumption models, with the meter data being tabulated by the CIS. Even if your utility uses analog meters, Automated Meter Reading (AMR), and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters, that data still needs to be imported into your CIS system to process monthly bills. When you have CIS/UB software that can handle all these meter types, you have software that will work with you now and grow with you in the future. In today’s market and with smart meters (AMI), utilities now have the option to use meter data management to spot trends and act. With seamless integration between your MDM and CIS, you have a wealth of information about your community’s usage and architecture, allowing you to troubleshoot issues, improve operations, and provide exceptional customer service.
Must-have #9 REST API
With meter data management, outage management, kiosks, payment portals, and even an electronic bill presentment and payment provider, you need a simple, effective way for your CIS system to “talk” to these other solutions. Having REST API integrations built into your CIS system allows you to use the best-of-breed software in each vertical, putting the best software to work for your community. Although many all-in-one software vendors will say they can perform what best-of-breed software can do, they often cannot do so without customization. Best-of-breed software ecosystems integrated give your utility everything you need to provide exceptional customer service without the expense and added implementation time of customization that an all-in-one system would need to perform the same tasks.
Must-have #10 Add-on Features
NorthStar has many add-on features that integrate seamlessly with our software giving utilities even more functionality without customization. With NorthStar, you can choose
SilverBlaze – customer self-serve web portal
mCare – mobile workforce management software
BI ReportsAnywhere (RAW) – preconfigured and configurable reports for day-to-day operations
BI Executive Information Systems (EIS) – preconfigured and configurable reports for administrators for short and long-term decision making
eDOCS – embedded content management solution
With the add-ons above, you have a complete customer experience solution with the tools you need to streamline processes and maximize efficiency.
When a utility’s CIS/UB has all of the above features, the utility has a powerful, robust system working to streamline operations and maximize efficiency. If your CIS system is not designed with these ten characteristics, you and your team could work harder than you have to, and it may be time to replace your CIS with a best-of-breed solution like NorthStar.
For over 45 years, NorthStar CIS has been designed with the end user in mind. In fact, many of our software’s features result from a collaboration between the NorthStar team and our customers, providing the most powerful, configurable CIS software on the market. If your software doesn’t have one of these ten characteristics, you owe it to you and your team to check out what NorthStar can do. Schedule your demo today.