Billing Solutions

The Challenge

Many utility companies are finding it hard to decide when to start the enhancement or replacement programmes that will deliver flexible, modern, functionally rich and easy to integrate billing applications.

The pressures to implement such a significant change programme are very evident, and typically in response to the following issues:

• Application integration requirements for improving customer contact and income management
• Changes in regulation
• A climate of cost reduction
• Concerns around legacy skills retention
• A regulatory environment driving comparative competition within the industry.

The need to continually challenge existing billing application functionality is very real as utilities strive to protect and grow their revenue and profit streams. Ideally, utilities want to operate easily adaptable billing applications where enhancements to product and service offers, tariffs and regulation, can be delivered quickly, cost effectively and readily flow through to associated systems. However, the desire to affect a step change in billing systems is often offset by a concerned perception of risk compounded by a financial benefits case that often appears marginal at best.

Billing Solutions for the Water Industry Drive down the total cost of service delivery without compromising control.
Find out more

The Expertise

As a global IT services provider, Fujitsu has extensive experience and capability in managing large-scale business critical billing solutions for leading utilities clients. Fujitsu has a thorough understanding of both the UK energy and water sectors, providing billing application hosting and application management services for a number of leading utilities including: Southern Water, Yorkshire Water, United Utilities, Centrica, npower and Scottish Power.

Fujitsu is not only recognised for its excellence in Service Management, but also for its partnership approach to business. Fujitsu’s approach is to fully understand the demands on your billing applications to ensure we deliver change programmes aligned to your business needs.

The Solution

Fujitsu will constantly validate the billing application’s ability to deliver expected value to the business. Fujitsu has successfully developed and enhanced existing billing solutions for leading utilities and thereby considerably extended the life of the billing investment through incorporating new functionality. Areas of successful development include the provision of web enabled services including electronic bill presentation, and automated tactical CRM solutions to improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of call centre agents.

Fujitsu has considerable experience working with utilities to determine the best way to ensure the billing applications meet the future requirements of the business. Fujitsu is able to make informed recommendations around taking the billing application portfolio forward, including legacy transformation, feasibility around package implementation replacement programmes and data migration. The billing application services can be delivered as a Managed Service from either a Fujitsu data centre or a location of your choice.

Fujitsu also has a proven application and hosting outsourcing service that will significantly enrich the transformational options moving forward. Fujitsu’s capabilities cover the following areas: -

• Development services for application enhancement
• Package implementation and data migration services
• Application integration
• Application support
• IT infrastructure & hosting services
• Development of a shared service solution for organisations with common requirements.

The Benefits

Through leveraging Fujitsu’s extensive utility billing skills and experience, you will be able to transform the overall value of your billing application and secure a lower total cost of service delivery. The use of one organisation to undertake billing application development work and the provision of an ongoing support and managed service, provides clear lines of accountability for the total solution. Fujitsu’s services are designed to reduce costs substantially and provide the means for cost effective ongoing application and infrastructure development and support.

Our flexible approach to outsourcing enables a number of different business models to be pursued. From the provision of an application outsource contract, through to developing and hosting a common billing solution for two or more water utilities via a shared services model, Fujitsu will work with you to realise your aspirations and challenges.

Fujitsu has recently completed a detailed analysis of the current costs associated with running a legacy billing application within a large-scale water utility. These costs have been compared with the capital and ongoing operational costs associated with a billing replacement programme. This analysis indicates a 5-year break-even timeframe in addition to the numerous business benefits around flexibility, use of modern development environments, common technology platforms to facilitate application integration, and provision of a functionally rich application.

Additional evidence suggests that further, substantial cost savings can be achieved from a shared services scenario, where, for example, regionally based water-only and integrated companies share a common external billing service