The energy utilities industry is undergoing major transformations, such as embracing alternative energies, developing Smart Grids and adapting to restructured markets.
IT is the primary vehicle to introduce the new business processes that can deal with this upheaval. While the industry faces significant growth of business transactions, both in volume and complexity, the pressure to reduce charges to consumers and cut operational costs is constant, and can be exacerbated in weak economic conditions.
Efficient information management is the key to controlling an increasingly diverse and customized range of activities. In practical terms, this means standardization of business software for commodity jobs and flexible interaction with specialized line of business applications to allow complex business workflows.
The applications within the SAP Industry Solutions for Energy Utility solution suite are emerging as an industry standard for managing shared business functions. This is particularly the case with the SAP billing and invoicing solution for energy distributors and retailers.
SAP solutions sets standards for energy billing and invoicing
SAP has developed a specific set of applications for the energy industry, called SAP for Utilities (SAP IS-U), which support role-specific business processes in the utilities industry and are addressing the needs of companies in the energy generation, transmission and distribution, retail, and services.
The SAP solution for Utilities / Customer Relationship and Billing (also called SAP ISU/CCS) is a member of this suite. The solution supports the typical core processes of a utilities company: consumption and revenue collection. For consumption, meter-reading orders have to be created and printed, and the results have to be uploaded into the system. To collect revenues, client billing must be generated, invoices issued, and payment reconciled.
SAP ISU business process
The SAP ISU module is composed of three main business processes: Consumption Entry, Contract Billing, and Invoicing & Printing (see Figure 3). Out of this functional portfolio, the team tested selected four scenarios as representative for KPI measurements:
- Upload and aggregated posting of incoming invoices.
- Billing as Mass Activity.
- Invoicing as Mass Activity.
- Print Bill as Mass Activity.
OIL AND GAS
Balindra Tech helps Oil and Gas firms address complexity through solutions which can effectively collect data from oil wells to retail outlets, integrate different parts of value chain to increase transparency and finally provide tools and solutions to effectively analyse data. Helping BALINDIRA Tech address complexity is a team of domain experts that includes geophysicists, logging and production engineers, seismic modellers and petroleum economists in upstream, financial and energy traders in trading segment and finally experts with experience working in refineries, retail marketing and B2B marketing in downstream. This team of domain experts supports technologists in the areas of analytics, enterprise resource planning, product engineering services and portals and content management solutions to leverage technology for meeting the business goals.
Our key differentiators in Oil and Gas sector are
- Established ecosystem comprising of key product vendors in Oil & Gas space including Strategic partnership with SAP and Oracle.
- Set of unique O&G process labs to manage complex workflows, testing and frameworks -retail modernization solutions, OSI PI, Terminal Management & Automation, etc.
- Experience working with world’s largest retail firms to bring their best practices to Oil and Gas retail outlets.
- Balindra Tech-wide focus on environment through ‘Eco Eye’ program investing in HSE niche solutions and best practices.
- A unique energy trading practice working closely with financial experts to bring financial services best practice to energy trading.
- A strong domain team with experience working in Upstream, Refineries, Oil and Gas retail, HSSE and energy trading.