BPO Solutions for the Utilities Industry

Globalization has brought new opportunities and challenges to the utility and energy industry. Growing global energy demands and supply constraints are making it increasingly difficult to manage revenue cycles and cost structures. Consumers expect better and expanded services at the same cost which requires the industry to rethink their strategies and delivery model to meet market expectations. 

The utilities industry has to manage internal challenges in the form of: Redundant IT portfolio across disparate organizations; High Operational Costs; Business Resilience Challenges; and End-of-life platforms.

At WNS, we engage with our clients to become part of their extended organization. We deliver a range of business processes outsourcing services to the Utility and Energy industry that enables our clients to focus on their core competencies and thereby gain a competitive edge in the market place. 

A snapshot of WNS’s experience and expertise in the Utilities Industry

  • More than 1,500 resources working on Utilities-related processes
  • Transitioned more than 400 work threads, within a year, across simple and complex processes within Utilities
  • Over GBP 10 Million billing exceptions processed till date
  • Improved NPS scores (indicator of customer satisfaction) significantly
  • Correspondence team processing more than 400,000 E-mails and 500,000 letters annually
  • Significant investment in learning infrastructure and processes to train resources on Utilities industry through establishment of Domain University
  • Recovered more than GBP15 Million in debt and supplier interest

Our Differentiators in Utilities BPO
  • A Global leader in BPO with a reputation for complex multi-process delivery
    • Managing over 600 processes across 160 countries, including managing customers for leading Utilities, delivering complex processes like treasury and IFRS compliance
    • End-to-end process, technology and analytics capabilities across the Utilities value chain with proven expertise
  • Investing in areas critical to the success of Utilities companies in the future
    • CIS platform which is cost-effective, flexible and comprehensive
    • Delivery models, which give more options to Utilities like Hosted and BPaaS
    • BI and Analytical platforms which focus on optimizing operating performance
    • Global Delivery Locations: Onshore, Nearshore and Offshore
  • Repository of frameworks, best practices, tools to improve profitability of Utilities companies along with high customer satisfaction
    • Enterprise Value approach to improve working capital
    • Diagnostics, Consulting, Transition and Transformation framework and methodologies
    • Bolt-on tools to improve financial performance
  • Ability to deliver superior business value by combining analytics, technology optimization, domain and process expertise
    • Leveraging a team of 1,500 Utilities, 1,500 analytics, 1,100 technology, and 600 quality process professionals
    • Analytical capabilities span business research, financial and investment research, market research and domain-based analytics, and data services
As a leader in managing business processes, WNS helps clients outperform across the entire Utilities value chain. WNS delivers business value to its clients through a combination of highly industrialized back-office, leading-edge technology platforms and sophisticated analytical tools. We offer end-to-end solutions that allow Utilities companies to transform their operations:

 

Customer Management Services
  • Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, Cross Sell/Up Sell, Cost-to-Serve
  • Customer Analytics – Segmentation, Lifetime Value analysis, NPS analysis
  • Customer Care – Queries, Exception Handling, Correspondence (for example, IVR, chat, mail, social media)

    Readmore

Meter-to-Cash
  • CIS Platform (with varying delivery models - Hosted, BPaaS)
  • Account Management, Billing, Collections, Exception Management

    Readmore

Operational Business Intelligence
  • Gather, integrate and analyze operational data / metrics
  • Build dashboards, reports and online portals for better transparency and monitoring
  • Pilferage mgmt, Work & Asset mgmt., Outage mgmt., Meter Data mgmt

    Readmore

Advisory Services
  • Customer Journey Management
  • Design programs to improve customer satisfaction and reduce cost-to-serve
  • Design operating model for new business models like pay-as-you-go

    Readmore

Shared Services
  • Finance & Accounting, Collections, Procurement
  • HR Administration, Legal Services
  • Research & Analytics

    Readmore

Case Studies
lastminute_icn
Industry: Utilities and Energy
Processes: Account management, Metering, Billing and Collections

Migrating from legacy applications to ERP platforms for a leading Utility company in the UK

Helping a leading Utilities company migrate from legacy applications to ERP platforms leading to substantial reduction of implausible meter reads, outstanding debt and device exceptions volume in less than six months, leading to superior customer service and building efficiency within the processes.
  • Implausible meter reads reduced by 1 Million in less than six months
  • Outstanding debt on devices reduced by GBP 3.4 Million in six months
  • 30 percent reduction in device exceptions volume in less than five months
  • Fixed the error and appropriated 87 percent of misdirected payments in one year

The Client’s Challenge:

A leading Utility company chose to migrate from legacy systems to SAP for managing customers involving account management, metering, billing and collections. Key customer-centric processes were clubbed together based on process flows (‘journey’); for example, customer acquisition to generation of the first bill. These process flows had business logic / validation controls built in to complete processing of requests. However, when validations fail, exceptions are generated, which need to be acted upon for the process flow to be complete. Apart from validation failures, there are other process anomalies in prepaid consumer accounts, which result in errors;for example, misdirected payments due to incorrect setup of meters and during home move. The client chose WNS to manage these exceptions and provide related customer services to its end customers in UK.

The WNS Solution
  • Leveraged internal operational SAP expertise to help review business rules for better process management
  • Delivered effective and flexible resourcing solution (for example, hiring, training and cross-skilling people with various skill sets) to manage 130 percent increase in exceptions volumes in eight months
  • Implemented Six Sigma and LEAN projects throughout the project life cycle; performed root cause analysis of exceptions to identify problems, executed pilots to do impact analysis and applied workaround and fixes for device exceptions and reassessing and changing tolerance limits for meters to impact IMR volumes


Enabling Outperformance by Extending Your Enterprise
  • Implausible meter reads reduced by 1 Million in less than six months
  • Outstanding debt on devices reduced by GBP 3.4 Million in six months
  • 30 percent reduction in device exceptions volume in less than five months
  • Fixed the error and appropriated 87 percent of misdirected payments in one year


RCI_small_Icn
Industry: Utilities and Energy
Processes: Accounts Payable / General Accounting and Period Close
Transforming Finance Function, Back office, Correspondence & Exception Management for a FTSE 100 Energy and Utilities Company

Scope
  • Scale: 778 FTEs * Year of Transition: 2006 * Geographies Supported: United Kingdom
  • Accounts Payable / General Accounting and Period Close
  • Fixed Assets accounting / P&L Variance analysis
  • Inter-company and Cash and bank reconciliation
  • Management reports and accounting
  • SAP Help desk with SAP FICO consultants
  • Resolve enquiries related to Billing and Invoicing, Tariff Queries and Setup, Change of Tenancy, Device Management, Online Account Issues, Voice - Customer Service, Initial Debt-related cases, New Product Service, Refunds, Deceased Account management, Payment Plans and Paperless Billing

Challenges
  • SAP implementation prior to BPO initiative
  • Lack of clearly defined processes
  • Unforeseen process changes during SAP implementation
  • No historical data available to benchmark processes or volumes
  • Multiple locations within UK / Non-availability of historical data
  • Lack of structured MI
  • System window non-availability for eight hours
  • Absence of a training environment
  • Lack of clearly defined processes and ownership
  • Data migration from multiple legacy systems / Migration plan to sync with data migration spread across multiple phases

Solution
  • Jointly refined F&A processes leveraging our functional expertise
  • Implemented 2 Six Sigma projects, 26 Kaizen projects and closed 349 Brainwave ideas
  • Successfully implemented AP Workbench (AP Query and Exception Management system)
  • Robust Reconciliations process to ensure minimum financial exposure
  • Robust Invoice validation procedures to identify revenue leakage
  • Team of six domain experts and 90 trainers onshore
  • Modeled correct learning curve and customized hiring, on-the-floor training and implemented a forecasting model
  • Jointly refined the processes jointly leveraging our functional expertise, understanding of client business and our team of SAP FICO consultants

Benefits
  • Saved £8.5 Million through an onshore Six Sigma project
  • Kaizen initiative recovered £3 Million in interest from supplier by identifying the gap in the interest charges for pre-payments
  • Reduced vendor queries by 45 percent through Six Sigma projects
  • Cleared open items in balance sheet reconciliations worth £160 Million over a year’s time
  • Recovered amounts worth £500k from vendors
  • £9.2 Million debt recovery triggered by Manage Debt Team in last three quarters (2010)
  • Manage Debt VSM Project: Reduced NVA time for sending debt from 121 days to three days, thereby saving $54,528. Reduced DPMO from 4,011 to 2,532
  • Generated QNS $80,000 through Kaizen and Brainwaves