Companies, organizations, and governments are facing increasing environmental and economic challenges. The pressure to improve corporate profits and sustainability has forward-thinking companies turning to energy management as a strategic source of cost reduction, profit margin growth, and cash flow improvements, not to mention regulatory compliance. Energy is the third-largest budget item for most U.S. companies and it represents $1 trillion of the nation’s gross domestic product1. Like any major expense, energy usage must be understood before it can be reduced. However, many organizations to this day still resort to employing teams of specialists to manually enter utility bill data each month for their hundreds of facilities under management. Identifying energy cost and carbon emissions reduction opportunities involves collecting data that is not only accurate, but also timely and complete — a task that can only be accomplished through automation. This white paper discusses the top 5 reasons why the process of manual data entry of utility bills should be abandoned and why automation is vital to the operations and outlook of your organization.

1. Companies, organizations, and governments are facing increasing environmental and economic
challenges. The pressure to improve corporate profits and sustainability has forward-thinking companies
turning to energy management as a strategic source of cost reduction, profit margin growth, and cash
flow improvements, not to mention regulatory compliance.
Energy is the third-largest budget item for most U.S. companies and it represents $1 trillion of the
nation’s gross domestic product1. Like any major expense, energy usage must be understood before it
can be reduced. However, many organizations to this day still resort to employing teams of specialists to
manually enter utility bill data each month for their hundreds of facilities under management. Identifying
energy cost and carbon emissions reduction opportunities involves collecting data that is not only
accurate, but also timely and complete — a task that can only be accomplished through automation.
This white paper discusses the top 5 reasons why the process of manual data entry of utility bills should
be abandoned and why automation is vital to the operations and outlook of your organization.
RESOURCES
WHITE PAPER:
STOP MANUALLY ENTERING
YOUR UTILITY BILLS!
Top 5 Reasons Why Automation is Key To
Your Organization’s Success
1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, “The Economic Impacts of the Oil and Natural Gas Industry on the U.S. Economy”

2. Reason 1: Because automation gives you
near real-time access to energy data,
and energy data is the foundation of all
important energy decisions.
Data-driven decisions are more accurate and
effective than decisions made based primarily on
instinct or assumptions. It’s impossible to manage
what cannot be measured, and energy data is key to
understanding energy consumption and spend.
The decisions made regarding energy usage and
spend are primarily driven by four major factors:
1. Financial performance
2. Customer demands and satisfaction
3. Sustainability for market leadership
4. Regulatory compliance
Each of these drivers are causing executives to
examine the impact energy spend has on their
bottom line, on day-to-day operations, and on the
organization as a whole.
Because energy spend is the third largest budget
item, behind labor and materials, for most U.S.
companies, it is often looked to as a starting point
for cost cutting and profit improvement. Reaching
optimal financial performance requires not only
reducing energy consumption, but also accounting
for rising energy prices and having a handle on your
organization’s rate schedules.
With a myriad of options and alternatives in the
marketplace today, customers have more power
than ever to choose with whom they work. More
and more customers are placing value on how their
vendors operate and impact the world in which
they live. These new customer demands are being
answered, and we have seen that the organizations
that commit to sustainability targets are leaders in
their fields. Researchers at the University of Notre
Dame have found a positive correlation between
environmental practices and financial performance2.
More and more nations are developing legislation
to curb impacts on the environment. Complying
with these rules and relations is not only necessary
from a legal perspective, but also from a financial
perspective in order to mitigate risks from penalties.
With important energy decisions to be made and
actions to be taken, data is at the heart of it all.
Sometimes decisions need to be made based on
historical data, other times decisions need to be
made with forecasting. Decision makers need a
centralized and automated approach to gathering
and normalizing this data to support not only their
day-to-day operations, but also their long-term
plans and goals.
Reason 2: Because more and more
departments within your company are
asking for utility data.
The energy management focus is shifting from
tactical to strategic partially because an increased
number of departments within an organization are
beginning to see the value in utility bill data to
support their core job functions.
Accounting teams were previously the only
teams that needed utility bills in order to pay
them in a timely manner, but these days, energy
managers, facilities and building managers, energy
procurement professionals, and sustainability
executives across an array of industries are
beginning to request access to utility bills for their
own purposes. Some of the use cases for energy
and utility bill data include, but are not limited to:
• Minimizing energy spend
• Reporting sustainability progress
• Managing procurement contracts
• Minimizing procurement risks
• Streamlining the compliance process
• Achieving certifications
• Minimizing operational costs
Utility expenses, which were before seen as merely
a liability line item on a company’s balance sheet,
are now viewed as a strategic asset capable
of unlocking hidden opportunities for multiple
organizational departments.
2
“With important energy
decisions to be made and
actions to be taken, data is
at the heart of it all.”
2 Source: University of Notre Dame, “The Relationship Between Corporate Sustainability and Firm Financial Performance”
3 Source: Groom Energy

3. Strategic energy management has a different set
of requirements as far as technology investments
and governance levels, among other factors, are
concerned (refer to Appendix A).
Reason 3: Because manually entering utility
bill data is very costly.
Without an automated approach to data acquisition,
organizations must resort to manually entering
data into spreadsheets or directly into their
accounting, sustainability, energy management, or
business intelligence programs. For an organization
deploying energy or sustainability programs, the
data acquisition process can represent up to 50% of
the project’s costs, not to mention cause additional
risks to the project’s success3.
Manual data entry poses several risks to an
organization, including:
Human error. Manual data entry is prone to human
errors that can lead to inaccurate data.
Delayed data. The entire process of printing,
shipping, delivering, and finally reading the utility
bill can take between 45 to 60 days. By the time
the bill is consumed, the data is old. Energy
managers that are responsible for optimizing energy
consumption not only miss opportunities to be
proactive about their energy management practices,
but also to be reactive in the event that the bill
raises red flags by showing anomalies.
Partial or incomplete data. In an attempt to
contain labor costs of employing manual data entry
specialists, organizations may only capture the
“must-have” data and leave behind other valuable
data points, which could also be valuable to assess
and analyze.
Lack of domain expertise. Data entry clerks
typically do not have the domain expertise needed
to understand hundreds of different utility tariffs
and rate schedules, which may result in hundreds of
inaccuracies going unnoticed.
Manually entering utility bill data is an antiquated
process and one that leaves the energy project and
the organization susceptible to issues and missed
opportunities.
Reason 4: Because introducing the large
amounts of data needed for energy
insights can present challenges if managed
improperly.
Utility bills contain a lot of information. At times,
the bill may contain up to 125 data points, each
potentially just as valuable as the next for extracting
energy insights. The increasing demand for deeper
visibility into energy usage and spend is driving the
growing need for better data analytics, and as a
result, better data collection procedures.
However, technology advances and new
organizational demands are resulting in these data
sets’ becoming larger, global, and more varied,
which can present technical and organizational
challenges for companies lacking an efficient and
effective way of collecting and managing the data
(refer to Appendix B).
Firstly, larger energy data sets are the result of the
integration of existing energy data sets combined
with the deployment of more real-time energy
data collection devices and sensors across the
enterprise. Secondly, organizations that operate
globally need to integrate energy data sets from
various sites and countries to support these global
energy management strategies. Finally, energy data
is getting more varied from an increasing number
of disparate utilities. These data sets are commonly
captured in disconnected data management
systems, which can create information silos. With
more data, it becomes an even more daunting
task to collect it all, especially through manual
procedures.
Reason 5: Because automation allows
for scalability, and scalability allows your
organization to grow.
As energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives
move towards the top of the corporate agenda,
3
“The data acquisition process
can represent up to 50% of
the project’s costs...”

4. 4
having centralized and timely access to energy
data will become essential. Acquiring data through
automation is currently the only method that
scales seamlessly, increasing the ability for your
organization and its systems and processes to
do more with less. Through pure data extraction
straight from the utility, the time wasted during bill
transit and delivery shrinks drastically and the errors
committed during manual data entry are eliminated.
For commercial enterprises, automated utility bill
data allows for energy cost-cutting opportunities,
late fee avoidance, and improved profit margins,
among other benefits. For energy services and
software providers, automation of utility bill data
acquisition is not only a way to increase operational
efficiencies, but also a gateway to open new
revenue channels and serve customers better.
The are many reasons for obtaining automated
utility bill data, but the ultimate effect of providing
your organization with the right tools and processes
is to enable not only fast growth, but also smart and
scalable growth.
ABOUT URJANET
Urjanet is the world’s first provider of automated energy data, enabling organizations across all industries to make smarter, more
profitable and eco-friendly energy decisions. Urjanet’s proprietary technology seamlessly extracts disparate utility bill, meter, and
weather data directly from the source, standardizes it, and then delivers it into existing energy management, accounting, business
intelligence and sustainability reporting systems. Urjanet is a trusted data source not only for commercial enterprises, governments,
and school districts, but also for many leading energy services, software, and bill payment providers that use Urjanet data to open new
revenue channels, enhance operational efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction. For more information visit www.urjanet.com.

5. 5
Tactical
energy management
Strategic
energy management
Data Size Small, patchy
Low frequency
Departmental
Site-specific
Data aggregation &
consolidation
Feed
Frequency
Governance
Level
Technology
Investment
Organizational
Requirements
Big, global
Near real-time
Enterprise
System-wide
Portfolio & strategic
risk management
Appendix A
The Shift from Tactical to Strategic Energy Management

6. Technical Challenges Organizational Challenges
Requires enterprise-scale data
storage, processing & software
Disconnected data management
systems create information silos
Different functions have varying data
requirements
Energy Data
Requires higher performance
databases from software providers
Automated data collection requires
upgrades in business intelligence tools
Various departments lack an
accurate understanding of their data
Some organizations lack in-house
data analysis skills to extract business
insights
Firms often do not have the internal
resources to act upon real-time data
LARGER
GLOBAL
MORE-VARIED
REAL-TIME
Appendix B
The Technical & Organizational Challenges Resulting from Larger, Global, More
Varied, and Real-Time Energy Data
6