Energy Portfolio Ltd is a third-party UK intermediary (TPI) that specializes in cost-effective energy procurement. They understood that their 21-day invoice processing time was too long. It took too long for customers to gain access to the data, and all the envelope opening and manual processing of the energy data impacted their client’s ability to pay invoices on time.
Problem
Energy Portfolio lacked an automated approach to managing the utility data, and the bill processing-to-payment cycle was complex, fragmented, and resource-intensive. Their internal accounts payable and accounting processes were expensive and time-consuming, and they struggled to find one source of truth for their data. Data integrity was causing issues for their customers, and they were missing out on new business because they could not offer utility bill validation. Accounts payable and energy teams spread across multiple regions need to coordinate thousands of electric, gas, internet, waste bills to keep things running.
They needed to partner with an experienced and agile provider who could shorten processing time while keeping up with their organic growth and evolving strategic vision. The right partner would quickly be able to identify which processes to automate and which usage reports will assist their customers.
Solution
Bill Identity’s Utility Bill Management solution has helped accounts teams with significant time reductions by automating manual management of energy bills and payments while providing a seamless service to Energy Portfolio. The real-time Robotic Process Automation (RPA) driven solution has also delivered a single customer view, integrated processing, payment, and accounting across all utilities, including electric, gas, and water.
Key opportunities identified to enhance their energy category’s performance:
- Ability to automate utility bill collection for their customers.
- Ongoing energy data validation, visibility, and quality control
- Reporting automation, sophistication, and data integrity
- Opportunity to remove excel spreadsheets from energy reporting.
- Advance accruals & budgeting automation to drive accuracy and provide better planning and cost reduction in real-time.
- Central platform with up-to-date customer contact information, site lists, and contracts
Outcome
The TPI partnered with Bill Identity to help streamline their Utility Bill Management, focusing closely on the collection and bill validation for their customers.
Now that the Bids Utility Bill Management has been implemented, the company can now reallocate the time saved onto opportunities that add value to the bottom line. Manual utility bill collection and energy reporting via Excel spreadsheets are no longer required to manage their customers.
The TPI has estimated that they have saved over 14 days of processing time. This has meant that they can reallocate the time saved to nurture their customers. Because their utility data is now all stored in one place, Energy Portfolio’s, customers can make better financial decisions with the confidence that the bills are correct.
Bill Identity has deployed its RPA-driven Accounts Payable automation solution across the entire client portfolio, including incorporating their historical data for contextual analysis and trend prediction, all energy contracts, bill validation, and payment.
Energy Portfolio believes that the Utility Bill Management solution has saved their customer’s hundreds of thousands in overpayments and billing errors and reallocated nearly 14-days a month of employee time spent on bill management.
The implemented solution delivered:
- Centralized portfolio management – open/close, site inquiries, alerts & reports.
- Immediate bill receipt to payment file creation to avoid late payment penalties and utility disconnections.
- Integration of bill processing and payment file creation with the organization’s payment system.
- 24/7, anywhere, anytime portfolio accessibility provides visibility and reporting with payment-grade data audit credentials.
Before:
- Customers were frustrated with a lack of visibility into the utility data and slow processing times.
- Manual bill processing took over 21+ days from the time the bill was released to when it was in their platform.
- Missing out on new opportunities with clients because they were without validation services.
- Difficulties with day-to-day reporting and insights, especially environmental reporting.
- Staff burdened with time-consuming activities such as locating bills and extracting data manually.
- Slow, excel spreadsheet riddled process.
After:
- Nearly 14 days were saved each month by automating utility bill collection, validation, payment, and reporting.
- Increased profitability and customer satisfaction, and trust
- Saved customers hundreds of thousands with bill validation and resource efficiencies.
- A happier and more agile staff with more time to work on higher return tasks.
- A centralized portal to view client energy contracts, sites, budgets, and usage history.
- Assurance that their customers are not overpaying the energy suppliers.
- The ability to upload mass payments.
