The Netconnect whitepaper discusses the inefficiencies in utility operations and billing processes, emphasizing the labor-intensive manual methods currently in use. It presents Bill360, a comprehensive platform designed to automate invoicing and billing through customer inputs, thereby enhancing revenue collection and reducing errors. The document also highlights the need for modernized technologies in the utility sector to improve operational efficiency and address challenges such as fraud and data inconsistencies.

1. NetConnect WhitePaper | UOM-0620-2.1
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UTILITY OPERATIONS
An Integrated Approach

2. 1
Control of energy bills helps increase
the visibility of overall usage and fees
that can be used to boost cost-
effectiveness and sustainability.
This task is often handled in-house
manually , which makes it very labor in-
tensive and time consuming. Collecting
and standardizing data, entering in into
a database, and analyzing data to find
improvements, becomes a process of
time management.
Considering this industry provides ba-
sic amenities to their customers they
operate in a very regulated environment
as they are governed by state and law
of lands to ensure they are able to fulfill
the basic needs of a common man at an
effective price point. They also need to
b e m i n d f u l o f a s p e c t s l i k e u n -
interrupted supply and maintenance of
the pipework which goes to household
and commercial customers.
Introduction
Non-Stop, Relentless
Most Municipal Corpora-
tions were able to ensure
uninterrupted supply of
services even during these
times

3. 2
Manual Process
Utility bills are received in two
ways: as a paper or electronic in-
voice. Any of these energy bills
need to be downloaded or
scraped off the internet from a
website. Since each utility com-
pany provides bills at different
times during the month, a consis-
tent schedule would be required
to follow up on each website and
ensure the bills are downloaded.
In- house staff members are ex-
pected to compile, categorize,
and manually enter the utility bills
and enter different key fields
within a program. This process
often takes time when most of
the time is spent organizing the
data rather than making full use
of utility bill data. The manual en-
try of data also carries the risk of
more errors.
Cycle Time & Penal-
ties
Utility bills often have a short pay-
ment period which requires both
an efficient process and
accurate data to ensure payment
processing. Late payments rack
up additional fees which make
transactions by utility bill more
costly. In addition, many utility
bills allow several approvers to re-
view them before commencing
payment.
There are expectations
from the economic, social
and environmental per-
spectives to make in-
formed decisions that are
driven by data.
The problem facing many businesses
stems from the manual nature of col-
lecting and inserting bills into a sys-
tem. Utility data provides important
historical and trend data that enables
companies to analyze and forecast
usage, as well as to flag any discrep-
ancies that may arise in a bill.
The majority of the companies are
state-run organizations that are de-
prived of modern-day technology
and infrastructure and have a lot of
manual dependencies in these times.
This results in poor revenue collec-
tion, increased manpower workload,
lack of planning and forecast, utility
loss and frauds, poor customer expe-
rience, and eventually loss of
revenue/customer and decreased
margins which makes these organiza-
tions always facing challenges.
Challenges

4. 3
An average person
can spend 20
hours per week on
repetitive data en-
try tasks.
Data Normalization
Maintaining data consistency is one of the
biggest challenges for any data-related work.
Each utility vendor has its unique format
which provides a summary of total consump-
tion and cost making manually finding and
extracting data highly inefficient.
Each utility bill may have more than 140 dif-
ferent data points which provide insightful in-
formation to increase overall efficiency. With-
out normalizing the data, evaluating quanti-
ties vs. kilowatt hours becomes very difficult.
Data Quality
Poor data quality has a negative
impact on business and creates
issues that directly impact yo ur
ROI both in the short and long
terms. Data errors, whether it is
a misprint on a bill or a ma nual
error when entering data on the
utility bill, become extremely ex-
pensive to fix. Failing to flag
mistakes in billing escalate
quickly , causing more issues
down the line.
ROI
Utility sector requires huge investment when-
ever an organization is venturing into this sec-
tor, considering they are the service provid-
ers and have to supply electricity, gas, and
water to their end customers premises they
have to create robust pipework from their
plants to end customer premises and require
a huge investment in this regard. They must
install meters so the consumption can be re-
corded and accordingly bills can be gener-
ated.
It has been observed that majority of the or-
ganizations face challenges in getting ROI
which further adds on to their problems and
eventually forces such organizations to reach
to different financial institutions for aid and
falls in this vicious circle of loans etc.
Downstream Ven-
dors
Companies in the utilities sector
can account for 90 per cent or more of
their annual revenue i n contracts with
suppliers and vendors. Despite this
outsized share, relatively limited re-
source s are invested by most organi-
zations in contract development and
vendor management. Sub- optimal
contract terms and conditions com-
bined with a lack of successful con-
tract manageme nt will result in a
value erosion in procurement equiva-
lent to 9% of annual revenues.
Fraud
Utilities lose up to 5% to 9% of their an-
nual revenue due to non-technical
losses, including theft of resources and
internal fraud.

5. 4
SOLUTION
NetConnect’s endeavor to effective Utility Op-
erations Management:
Our endeavor is based on an Integrated Ap-
proach towards addressing some of the chal-
lenges. Hence integrating the various ‘Islands
of Information’ within the organisation to har-
ness a better outcome.
The solution co-opts multiple functions and
individuals across the corporation to deliver
essential services effectively.
Customer Management
Provisioning & Commissioning
CPE & Asset Management
Contactless Billing
Operations Management
FieldForce Management
Receivables Management
MIS & Dashboards
An Integrated Approach

6. 5
The most unique feature of this product which makes
its customers future-ready for any technology disrup-
tion is the ability of the tool to be customized and to be in-
tegrated with any new technologies. From the customer’s
standpoint, any section or features can be customized making
it more relevant for the organization and addressing its real-
time problems to get more tangible outcomes.
Bill360 works in a manner that whenever
there is a consumption input on the cus-
tomer's account the invoices are automati-
cally generated and are sent to the custom-
ers in a form of e-mail and hard copies.
This helps the organization to realize the
revenue based on specific consumptions.
The platform is also intelligent enough to gen-
erate invoices on customer's average con-
sumption in case there are no inputs re-
ceived on to customers account for more
than 2 months. The platform is designed
keeping in mind current technologies and
user accounts are being created based on
the level of access and the same can be ac-
cessed through various mediums such as on-
line and mobile handheld devices for better
customer experience.
The customer can give their own inputs
based on the consumption basis which our
software does the validation if there con-
sumption is in line with the previous meter
readings and post validation can generate an
invoice for the customer which again helps
the organization and the customer to be up
to date.
The tool does have smart integrations with
all the platforms by which the customers can
make their payments online and can enjoy
the benefits of early payments by receiving
discounts from the utility organization.
This smart platform also helps the utility organization to real-
ize if there are any fraudulent activities in terms of customer
consumption is noted and raise a trigger in the system for an
engineer to go physically check the meters at the customer's
premises. This unique feature helps organizations incurring a
loss of revenue for the customer and helps to maintain a bet-
ter customer experience.
The Fix

7. 6
Field Force Management
Field Force management is a pain area for all big
organizations that are required to provide sup-
port or services to its customers on location. The
biggest challenge they face is in the planning
stage. The organizations are required to plan to
assign tasks to representatives who are in an
area to ensure proximity as well as need to safe-
guard the customer’s interest pertaining to time-
lines. They are required to create routes for the
field staff to ensure both the above-stated prob-
lems are addressed.
The organizations also wanted to do a deep dive
in terms of what is the outcome of the visit of the
field staff as well as how the future routes will be
created based on the inputs received.
Considering the diversity of customers from do-
mestic and commercial, utility organization reve-
nue is dependent on how effectively the revenue
assurance process is being managed in any util-
ity organization. This has a direct correlation with
how effectively an organization can generate in-
voices as per the due date and subsequently able
to collect money from their end customers.
NetConnect has software that can be used in any
industry which is specifically designed to address
this issue faced by them. NetConnect’s solution
possesses smart functionalities which can be use-
ful to these organizations to create routes auto-
matically for the field force guiding them to utilize
field force effectively as well as can focus on cus-
tomer satisfaction as by using this tool produc-
tively of field force drastically increases which
helps the organizations to address more cus-
tomer problems with less staff.
Contactless Billing
This platform has been developed keeping in
mind newer technologies and how the utility sec-
tor can be benefitted by using its unique fea-
tures to increase revenue collection, generate
timely invoices, manage field staff in the most
efficient manner. One of the salient features of
this tool is contactless billing which enables all
its customers to capture meter readings upload-
ing the same on to the application installed on
their mobile and basis which the bills are gener-
ated for them.
This functionality has enabled businesses to
raise the invoices based on the customer inputs
received and has in turn resulted in saving the
cost of engineers visiting the customer's prem-
ises.
The benefits derived are far greater as organiza-
tions save costs, as well as customers, are get-
ting advantage of receiving discounts as the
businesses would like to pass on the benefit to
their end customers and creates the rewarding
experience for both the utility organization and
their end customers.
The unique features of Bill360 have helped or-
ganizations to get better ROI, streamlining the
processes, and have given visibility to their cus-
tomers to manage their own accounts which
have to bring in ownership and sense of respon-
sibility from all round angles.

8. 7
Customer implemented the Piped Natu-
ral Gas (PNG) and Compressed Natural
Gas (CNG) project for various applica-
tions in the Domestic, Commercial, In-
dustrial & Automotive sectors in Indian
cities.
Key Challenges faced by the customer:
Delays in reading collection
Manual customer management of
industrial/commercial and domestic us-
ers Offline application form for new
connections
No systematic process for handling
user queries
No tracking of Connection-TAT.
No MIS reports
Manual invoice generation
Bill plans and tax plans management
Mobile Apps: reading collection via image
capture for end-users and collection agents
Self-Care Portal: Web application for Cus-
tomer Management, Account Management
Online CAF: New connection registration on-
line
Support System: Ticketing system for gener-
ating and handling queries raised by the cus-
tomers
Tracking: Automatic tracking of Connection-
TAT.
Dashboard and Reporting: Graphical MIS re-
ports for registered users, connected users
and disconnected users, billing and payment
history
Auto Invoicing: Automatic generation of in-
voices for industrial/ commercial and domes-
tic users
Plan Management: Bill plans and tax plans
can be set dynamically as per the customers
(domestic/ non-domestic)
Bill360 helped increase ROI to a impressive
number while managing entire life cycle and
consumption reporting with advanced analyti-
cal dashboards combined with seamless in-
voicing and billing to end customers.
Success Story

9. 8
In the age of Digital Revolution, Managing
Utility Billing and Invoicing at one platform
is becoming the most critical part. Bill360 as
a platform enables companies in Utilities sec-
tor to gain insights into important data that
will enable smooth and efficient functioning
of entire Life-cycle and Consumption with
seamless integration of invoicing and Billing
with advanced analytical dashboard to help
increase productivity, efficiency and ROI.
Conclusion

10. 9
NetConnect Pvt. Ltd. (NetConnect) is a Technology & Solutions organi-
zation that is in the business of helping customers in extracting
greater value from their Operations. From helping our clients run
their Technology to using our Technology to help them run their busi-
ness, we operate at the cusp of a significant transformation in creat-
ing value. With a track record of over 20+ years, robust financials,
the trust of over 100+ customers, domain expertise, and an incredible
team, we are uniquely positioned to be the technology partner of
choice.
Our solutions Ops360, Asset360, Bill360, and Secure360 are a must
for any vibrant organization.
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Net Connect Pvt. Ltd.
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Ph:+91-80-4567 3800
www.netconnectglobal.com
sales@netconnectglobal.com
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