Saturday, September 12, 2015

Adoption Of Utility Bill Software

By Daphne Bowen


All the public utilities share the same objectives which are provision of clean water and energy to the public. Though these services are basic they also remit some revenue which must be accounted for. Like any other business, customer satisfaction is a priority. In modern day the manual systems are being replaced rapidly by automated systems which can read the meters remotely. These automatic systems for reading the meters are preferred to the manual systems because of the risks involved in reading the meters in residential homes where the residents may be hostile. The employees of the company sometimes have to travel through harsh landscape to reach the locations of the households. Utility bill software can be used in big and small cities.

A feature of such a system is that it is possible to establish an audit trail that shows the movement of funds and payments into the company. Corruption cases have been reduced due to this and accounts that are in debt can be easily identified. Another feature is the possibility of communicating directly to the consumers through emails. Consumers are alerted and given notices on payment dates and other important information.

Installing a utility bill program ensures that the customers receive a detailed statement showing their actual usage and the rates used to charge them. This has significantly reduced the amount of complaints lodged by the customers as a result of inaccurate readings if the meters were read manually.

Companies which have adopted this system are much more efficient in their bills distribution. These companies are able to have electronic billing whereby the bills are sent to the consumers through their emails. Postage costs that used to be incurred before to send bills via post have been eliminated.

A utility company that is looking to automate its operations with view of making improvements in its operations should consider software that is specially suited for their operations. The designers of such software should have an in depth understanding of activities of that company.

In this way, the repetitive tasks can be automated. The workers are able to concentrate on other issues in the company. The company also saves money because most of the activities will be carried out by the software, hence fewer employees.

Companies which have installed automated billing systems have reaped the benefits of reduced negative lawsuits. Due to the elimination of manual meter reading in their firms, the number of injuries and accidents reported by their employees reduce significantly. Even the lawsuits from hostile home owners who deter entry into their homes and term it trespass are avoided.

Automatic meter readers are justified because of location of some of the meters. Some manual meters are located in dangerous areas which is an increased risk to the employees of that company. Other areas are even hard to access located in harsh terrains. This increases the cost to the company and even consumes more time in reading of those meters.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment