Blog written by Rui Mano, Choice Technologies and Stefan Wolf, SAP
Today one of the most difficult challenges to Utilities is fighting meter fraud and theft.
Electrical Utilities lose 85 Billion US$ per year worldwide with theft and meter tampering on electricity distribution. Significant numbers also affect water and gas distribution business.
This huge amount of money is partially included in the tariff (i.e. paid by the honest clients), or subsidized (which means is supported by taxpayers) and the rest of it is pure loss of revenue in Utilities’ balance sheets. Huge amounts of electricity, water and gas are purchased by the Utility, are produced, transmitted, distributed, operated and maintained, but not invoiced causing immense loss to honest customers, taxpayers and Utilities.
Today, most Utilities use home-developed applications, which are no more than SQL queries or Excel spreadsheets to handle the very complex tasks of finding out the customers that fool metering and steal their profits. These tools are clearly not enough to solve this great challenge.
One of the pillars that support companies in the competitive scenario is software technologies created to help achieving best results / revenue optimization through analytics and manipulation of large amounts of data (Big Data) and knowledge that already exists in the corporation to generate actionable insights.
Choice Technologies has developed and improved along a decade, software applications that help Utilities to handle the problem and reduce their losses, bringing benefits for the whole society - the Utility, the honest clients and taxpayers, and the environment.
Revenue Intelligence (TM), Choice Technology suite of revenue assurance software applications integrated with SAP HANA (the Platform by SAP for Next-Generation Applications and Analytics), is a predictive analytics software that applies the most advanced artificial intelligence techniques to detect meter fraud and theft in the Utility industry.
Revenue Intelligence covers the full spectrum of theft detection through operation management and control, including self-improvement via computer self-learning and genetic algorithms. This supports for adaptation, preventing from new form of fraud to fool programmed patterns.
Revenue Intelligence is the most complete and technologically advanced analytical and operation software in the market - and works wonderfully on top of SAP HANA.
Nevertheless, software is not all. We will discuss methodologies and processes like the Intelligence Center (TM) that supports Utilities with methodologies and theft detection patterns, a knowledge base proved along our long practical experience with several Utilities in many geographies, and successful to detect theft / meter fraud and improve utility recovery in a consumer base of more than 30 million utility customers. One of our clients has improved energy recovery by 400%, which means more than US$40 mi additional EBITDA per year. The Revenue Intelligence together with the Intelligence Center has supported Utilities in providing a RoI (Return on Investment) in very short time, and a very positive cash flow.
Participate in the following workshop and learn how you can benefit from this technological masterpiece to leverage the revenue of your Company:
Workshop 7: Revenue Protection with Choice Technologies and SAP on Monday April 11 from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m. at the International SAP Conference for Utilities in The Hague, Netherlands.
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