Cloud utility management is a term used to describe a model that enables utilities to use and consume software services instead of buying and managing their own hardware and servers. Utility computing companies are able to provide scale and operational expertise in the field, which saves on investment in equipment, maintenance and the risk of technological obsolescence. This also enables utilities to gain economies of scale and reduce costs by pooling capacity and paying for what they use.
The first step to take when implementing cloud utility management is organizing all of your bills electronically in one place. This is best done by creating a single file on your computer (if you have e-bills) or by scanning paper bills into PDFs and saving them in one place. This allows your team to view and access them easily so that they can get a clear picture of how much you are spending on your utility bill.
Implementing a cloud utility management system that combines billing, customer information systems (CIS) and meter data management systems is an excellent way to streamline your process and improve your company’s efficiency. You can also look for software that offers a range of additional features like nonmetered billing, rate management and penalty/cut-off processing to make your system more useful.
It is also helpful to identify customer usage patterns through graphical or chart form, which will allow you to track and identify heavy usage areas so that you can better serve your customers. Finally, you should choose a cloud utility management system that maintains 15-minute transactional backups and daily full backups that are marshaled offsite to redundant or recovery servers to protect against infrastructure failures. cloud utility management