Solutions for the Utilities Industry

The utilities industry is currently in a state of restructuring. Continued de-regulation, the push for greener renewable sources, and the constant need for investment are big factors posing a significant threat and an opportunity for utilities organizations. The increasing demand for energy creates a unique and challenging environment for utility companies to operate profitably. Continuous pressure is being placed on companies to ensure an adequate and efficient supply of energy services at a low cost–all while lessening if not eliminating the environmental impacts of production.

While these are the macro challenges that companies, vendors, regulatory boards cope with, utility companies also experience day-to-day challenges during the operations, maintenance and management of an energy utility. Companies struggle with revenue planning, various reporting requirements, frequent forecasting, accurate resource planning and simply measuring and analyzing the financial status of the business.

Why Prophix for Utility Providers

The Prophix suite of performance management solutions enables utility companies to improve performance and make the business profitable. To ensure better use of assets and resources in a time when the industry is being challenged by aging physical assets and workers, companies need to invest in technology to enable improvement. Business processes such as planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and consolidation need to be integrated rather than constantly separated to eliminate operational inefficiencies.

Utility organizations use Prophix Performance Management software and services to:

Measure and analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) [+}

• Generate driver-based dashboard and scorecard reports illustrating key industry metrics such as rates, usage, price and energy charges
• Utilize lagging indicators and/or leading indicators to help predict future performance (e.g. average revenue per kWh and/or forecasted customer rate schedules)
• Measure current and past corporate performance against industry key performance measures (rates, usage, etc.)

Capitalize on revenue planning [+]

• Dissect your operating revenue by customer class to identify where better efficiencies can be had in terms of product/service profitability
• Analyze various billing rate schedules to offer alternative billing options to your customers
• Cross examine your revenue data by creating revenue scenario plans by quantity and price to further explore improving the bottom line

Implement consolidated reporting across the organization [+]

• Automate the distribution of consolidated financial statement reports to different divisions of the organization, (finance, engineering, operations)
• Generate and provide detailed reports containing customer usage and rate information, quantity and price variances, capital expenditure projections and headcount requirements to bring visibility to critical operating metrics
• Create multiple reporting views of the organization in a user-friendly format that allows for various business units to cross-examine information at a consolidated and/or detailed line-item level in an error-proof environment

Multi-year forecasting and re–forecasting [+]

• Create multi-year monthly forecasts to start learning from the past and projecting more accurately into the future
• Generate realistic pictures of the future by creating demand, energy, revenue, and operational forecasts
• Forecast and project future revenue streams to determine margins and future cash flow

Predict and measure cash flow intelligently [+]

• Better understand the effects of changing revenue rates and classes on cash flow
• Eliminate excessive external financing for essential new technology initiatives by measuring cash flow on a frequent basis
• Understand the inflows and outflows of cash associated with the operations of the business to create more precise projections to meet all credit obligations
• Manage costs associated with ongoing capital expenditures and future projects by measuring cash flow more precisely

Effectively manage resources[+]

• Better understand the effect of an aging workforce; prepare and plan for turnover and for employee retirement
• Eliminate workforce redundancy through better analysis and planning of current staff
• Understand all costs associated with each employee; create a more precise projection for operating costs
• Manage costs associated with ongoing capital expenditures and future projects

Utility Resource Center

Utilities companies who have selected Prophix: