This document discusses strategies for energy companies to mitigate regulatory risks when operating in deregulated markets. It outlines requirements that vary by state, including terms and conditions documents that must be provided to customers. Fines for noncompliance can be substantial. The document recommends automating processes for managing documents, increasing visibility of documents among stakeholders, clearly outlining approval processes, carefully managing changes, and streamlining vendors. It describes a regulatory document management system that can automate workflows and ensure accurate, timely delivery of required documents and communications.

1. MINDING
YOUR
Ts & Cs:
5 PROVEN STRATEGIES
FOR MITIGATING RISK

2. IT’S A RUNNING JOKE IN THE ENERGY
SECTOR—NOT LONG AFTER A
MARKET WELCOMES DEREGULATION,
REGULATION’S MORE DIFFICULT RELATIVE
– RESTRICTION – MOVES IN NEXT DOOR.
The truth is, ensuring regulatory compliance is no laughing matter. It’s
a matter of being able to sell. With the constant risk of fines, the threat
of losing parts of a book of customers or worse, being shut out of the
market entirely, it’s crucial for companies to get this right.
Since states began allowing consumers to access private open market
power and/or natural gas suppliers in the 1990s after widespread
deregulation (and resulting government interventions) of the
1970s, the power of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC), state public utilities commissions (PUCs) and consumer
advocate groups has grown stronger.
While the market for retail energy providers continue to grow, so
have the barriers to entry. That includes the volume of terms and
conditions energy retailers are required to provide to consumers
as well as disclosure documents.
Minding Your Ts and Cs: Ensuring Regulatory Compliance for Energy Communications
These requirements vary from state to state, making it difficult to manage
communications across multiple markets.
The consequences of failing to properly do so are serious, not only in dollar
amounts, but in lost revenue.
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3. • The market for energy reselling is experiencing unprecedented growth,
with current market participants growing by 30 percent per year.1
• The deregulated market for natural gas alone is more than $10 billion;
the power market is exponentially greater, according to AEC.
• Thirty-one states currently have some form of deregulation, with
more expected to follow. 2
• Due to reporting and requirements, the time to enter a new market
ranges from several weeks to several months, limiting the potential for
tens of thousands in new revenue.
• PUCs require reporting and filing of more than a dozen
separate documents.
• Fines for noncompliance can range from $50,000 to
$2 million or more.
• Energy retailers could lose an entire book of clients or find themselves
locked out of an entire market. This could represent a loss of as much
as $100 million in annual revenue.
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WHAT’S AT STAKE
Regulatory fines and lost revenue potential can be a devastating
blow, especially to energy service companies anxious to expand their
customer base in a growing market.
Consider this:

4. In deregulated markets, complying with state PUCs , and other regulators has become a full-time job
that reaches the highest levels of a company. In some cases, energy markets have been restructured
to promote competition, prompting even stricter oversight to ensure reliability, financial security,
transparency, reasonable prices and safeguards against market manipulation.3
What’s at Stake
CCOs and COOs face the enormous responsibility of ensuring all customer communications and
marketing collateral—from email to social media—meet regulatory standards. That includes disclosing
appropriate terms and conditions to all new customers and keeping track of what was distributed to
customers, when and through which communication channels.
Companies are going to great lengths, and spending
top dollars, trying to manage these risks.
For some companies, that means hiring several full-time employees or
re-allocating current ones to perform painstaking, manual processes such as
updating, printing and mailing disclosure documents to new customers daily.
Other companies have invested in expensive
document management systems with a
variety of functionalities they don’t need.
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5. PROVEN STRATEGIES
FOR MITIGATING RISK
These four strategies can help energy remarketers ensure compliance
without overburdening their already limited internal resources.
1. AUTOMATE MANUAL PROCESSES
Terms and conditions required in energy contracts are extensive
and vary by state and market. Many companies have an entire
team responsible for managing customer contracts and
ensuring delivery of all required documents within 48 hours.
For fast-growing companies entering new markets, this is
an onerous burden that can significantly delay market
entry, reducing the potential for new sales.
Having staff tasked with manually inputting terms
and conditions specific to each market is not only
time consuming, it’s also risky.
A single mistake can be
compounded thousands of
times over in mass mailings.
Automation decreases this
risk while increasing efficiency,
allowing companies to enter new
markets more quickly.
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6. Regulatory compliance is an important matter for operations and it’s crucial for marketing
communications. This adds several layers of complication to multi-state and multi-channel marketing
campaigns. Even if companies outsource the production, printing and distribution of marketing
collateral, they are ultimately responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the information. This may include
state-specific disclaimers that require legal approval.
Unfortunately, many energy companies still rely on manual review
methods like email to manage legal review and revisions of marketing
documents. Aside from being inefficient, this opens the door to more
opportunities for error.
Consider the process for creating a single brochure that must be tailored for customers in a dozen
distinct markets. A marketing manager must secure approval from the business development
managers and legal representatives for each region, as well as approval from the corporate
communications manager and chief compliance officer. Each revised version is passed along through
email. All it takes is one person copied on the email thread to inadvertently pass along the original
version he downloaded instead of the most recently revised version.
It takes the marketing manager several weeks
to secure approval, only to discover the “final”
version still has outdated information. The team
misses the intended deadline for distribution,
delaying the new product launch.
With a shared workflow management system,
these documents can be updated easily, with
all revision history saved and tracked. Sales reps
and other key stakeholders can upload a single
document and easily see who has reviewed it and
what changes have been made.
2. INCREASE DOCUMENT VISIBILITY AMONG KEY STAKEHOLDERS
Proven Strategies for Mitigating Risk
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7. Energy Retailers are seeing more staff turnover due to shifts in supply
and demand in a rapidly changing market.
Institutional knowledge about standards and key processes can be quickly forgotten amid these
changes if it is not written down. And since legal and subject matter experts vary by market and
product, it’s helpful to outline the appropriate chain of approvals required for specific communications
in a shared document that can be edited in real time. Storing important process documents in content
and workflow management systems ensures everyone across your company uses a consistent
approach to manage approvals. And this approach is easily transferred to your new employees.
Terms and conditions change. Make sure you have a process for
implementing those changes quickly and seamlessly.
This process is much easier when documents are easily searchable and updated through a
digital database. Be sure your legal department has access to your digital database, and invite a
representative to conduct periodic quality audits to ensure your documents reflect all recent changes.
Each new vendor you invite into your communications adds a layer of
complexity and risk potential to the process.
By contrast, relying on a single provider to manage all customer communications and marketing
documents reduces the potential for error.
3. SPELL OUT THE PROCESS
4. MANAGE CHANGES CAREFULLY
5. STREAMLINE VENDORS
Proven Strategies for Mitigating Risk
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8. THE VALUE OF DATA REGULATORY
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
DATA Communications Management offers seamless regulatory
document management through a single, secure digital engine that
uses logic to automate communications.
Customers input terms and conditions for each market, followed by customer data that is sorted,
validated and matched with the appropriate information. From there, they can establish workflows
to create, print and deliver the right information to the right customers through our printing and
fulfillment center.
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OBJECTS
DATA FEED
TRANSACTIONAL DM CAMPAIGNS EMAIL DEPLOYMENT
NAME ADDRESS SERVICE ADDR TRANSACTIONS LOGOS T/C EMAIL
Statements
Invoices
Collection
Letters
SPOOL
FILE
PDFs for online
presentation
EMAIL
CLOUD
Promo Letter
Postcard
Custom
Piece
Statements
Invoices
Marketing
Campaigns
Promo’s
Welcome Kits

9. Our regulatory document management system offers:
The Value of DATA Regulatory Document Management
• DATA ACCEPTANCE AND VALIDATION — Maintaining data
integrity and logic validation
• SINGLE TEMPLATE DESIGN WITH DYNAMIC CONTENT
GENERATION — Communication that redesigns itself dynamically
based on logic
• TERMS & CONDITIONS SINGLE POINT DYNAMIC
UPDATE(S) — Using a data dictionary across various markets and states
• MULTI-CHANNEL DELIVERY CAPABILITY (print/email/SMS)
• DYNAMIC DOCUMENT PROCESSING AND EXECUTION —
Dynamic execution of multiple document types
• PRODUCTION REPORTING FOR ALL CHANNELS
• CONVENIENCE — Customers enter a single file per day which is
parsed and separated by market and state. DATA’s programming system
then identifies which customers need to receive that document and
whether they want to receive it via email or traditional mail.
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10. Some of North America’s leading energy companies trust our
document management system to:
The Value of DATA Regulatory Document Management
• MITIGATE RISK
• INCREASE SPEED TO MARKET from months to days or weeks
and achieve millions of dollars in incremental revenue
• ACQUIRE NEW CUSTOMERS — Design and execute campaigns
that enable them to optimize customer acquisition marketing
• REDUCE COSTS — Adopting an automated process reduces internal
resources needed to manually manage terms and conditions, enabling
those resources to be reallocated where they are needed most and
saving costs elsewhere
Leading ESCO Reduces Time to Market
When a leading energy service company began working with DATA more than
a year ago, its average time to enter a new market was several weeks. The
company also relied on a full-time staff member to manage documents that
took 10 days to complete and file. Using DATA’s regulatory document management system, those
same documents can be completed within a single day. This has decreased the total time to market
to just 7-10 days, allowing the company to grow more quickly, make better use of internal resources,
maintain a competitive advantage and mitigate risk.
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11. Looking for a solution to your greatest business communications challenges?
Contact Bruce Shields at bshields@datacm.com to start the conversation.
DATA Communications Management is a single-source provider for all
business communications, eliminating the need to work with multiple
vendors on a single project. We have the technology and expertise to
handle all your communications needs and ensure compliance with all
industry regulations.
In addition to regulatory management, our capabilities include:
OUR CAPABILITIES
• COMMERCIAL PRINTING, WIDE-FORMAT
PRINTING, PRINT ON DEMAND, WEB-TO-
PRINT AND MORE
• CONTENT AND WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT
• DATA MANAGEMENT AND ANALYTICS
• DIRECT MARKETING
• EVENT TICKET AND GIFT CARD PRODUCTION
• LABELS AND AUTOMATED ID SOLUTIONS
• LOGISTICS AND FULFILLMENT
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