A leading procurement and validation company that is engaged by some of the UK’s most prestigious property-management companies to run their end-to-end procurement programs. The organization brings clarity, control, and continuity in the non-core cost bases of its customers’ real estate. They provide a level of industry expertise for their customers that is difficult to match in-house, saving them substantial amounts of money on their energy contracts along the way.
Problem
The business had bill validation in place for clients as part of the end-to-end energy bill management process. Historically there wasn’t suitably reliable technology to automate the validation process. They selected a digital platform that would deliver automated bill validation. However, it relied on sourcing EDI bills from suppliers as the input. EDI billing formats are becoming increasingly difficult to source from utility suppliers who view them as ‘expensive and time-consuming.’
The alternative, manually inputting data, was time-consuming and left a margin of human error.
They needed a tool to collect and read PDF energy bills and reformat the information to interface with their current system.
The organization was introduced to Bill Identity (Bid) via a meeting with a mutual client. They were impressed with Bid’s expertise in the complexity of utility billing, and its reputation for excellent service. After confirming Bid’s Utility Bill Parsing could provide precisely what was needed, they found a solution to their problem.
Solution
The Bid team was highly attentive and communicated with clarity throughout, which aligned with the organization’s business approach.
The parsing solution addressed the data issue that the client had. It meant that they were able to reduce the time/cost of manually preparing bills for validation and speed up collecting and aggregating data. This change saved a considerable amount of time for the team.
Outcome
The speed at which the business can now collect and process bill information has significantly impacted its day-to-day working.
The company is now saving that time, and those team members can now add value to client business with the time that has been freed up.
Before
- Data uploads were slow and resource-intensive.
- Increased risk of manual data entry errors.
After
- The time and cost of manually preparing bills for validation have been reduced.
- A sped-up utility bill collecting and aggregation of billing data.
- Increased clarity with which the business can view and analyze billing data.
- Increased control over meter spends and budgets and adds value to their customers.
