Convergys Smart Utility Solutions

Convergys Smart Utility Solutions
Billing and customer care for the 21st century

Today’s utility has to overcome a number of tough challenges,
and existing IT infrastructure simply isn’t keeping up
with the demands. The good news – there’s no need to
replace your legacy system. Convergys can augment
existing systems with innovative functionality and power
so you can fully exploit the challenges and opportunities
that the smart meter and grid revolution brings.
The need for change
The flood of regulatory pressures, for example
the 20:20:20 smart metering and advanced grid
infrastructure initiatives being encouraged through
EU and member state governments legislation and
regulation changes, increased customer demands and
the mandate to become more customer-centric: all are
driving the need for radical change within utilities. But
how do you introduce such root and branch change
while equipping your organisation with the flexibility to
accommodate even more change in the future
The need for increased
functionality
Legacy CIS in use today at utilities are coming
under intense pressure. The need to introduce a
new generation of rating, billing and customer care
applications in order to control costs, minimise risk and
improve service levels means these systems will need to
support:
• The ability to create and promote new tariffs, such as
time of use and dynamic pricing
• A customer-centric view (as opposed to the current
meter-centric view)
• Large volumes of smart meter transactions
• Increasing complexity of new products and services
• Speedier development and launch of new products
and services
• Faster processing of customer queries and
complaints
• Reduction in cost of front and back office processes.
The need for real-time billing
With the advent of smart metering and smart grids there
is also the requirement for real-time billing. However,
legacy systems are unable to handle the sheer number
of meter data intervals demanded by smart metering.
To compound matters, these frequent meter reads will
produce vast volumes of data that will need to be stored
and processed in order to calculate accurate bills for
your customers.
Adding this extra functionality to a legacy CIS has
proven to be both time consuming and costly. Utilities
looking to move to a brand new platform will be highly
reluctant – and in many cases, physically unable – to
undertake a wholesale ‘rip and replace’ approach in the
timeframes the market demands.

The Solve and Evolve TM approach
Convergys’ Solve and Evolve strategy has been
developed in line with this best of breed trend to
demonstrate how customers with legacy platforms
can benefit from new systems and functionality
that will provide the agility and flexibility required
to enable them to differentiate themselves in the
market. Perhaps most critical, this can be done whilst
simultaneously accommodating seamless integration
to the legacy central database or data store. As the
diagram below illustrates, Solve and Evolve proposes
the addition of incremental capabilities to your existing
legacy implementation to address your most pressing
business issues while adding increasing levels of best
of breed functionality that complement the current
legacy system.
In short, utilities are able to ‘solve’ the highest priority
issues and ‘evolve’ their business to one that is highly
differentiated but still cost-effective and efficient to run
– with little or no risk to existing systems. Solve and
Evolve is in no way a replacement strategy for legacy;
it is one that seeks to augment and exploit the core
functionality of a utility’s legacy implementation (e.g.,
the central database) to provide extended functionality.
This enables utilities to address business challenges
and exploit new opportunities that were unforeseen
at the time the legacy system was deployed. Legacy
co-existence is the fundamental tenet in our Solve and
Evolve story and one that specifically assists clients
in addressing the key challenges regarding real-time
aggregation and rating and billing for smart meters.
Figure 1: Solve and Evolve Solutions example.
Old utility model
(Premise-based,
monthly reads, static)
MDM
Parallel
Rating
Evolution steps
Overlay
CRM
Portals,
Call Centre
Analytics,
Decisioning
Data
Migration
New utility model
(Customer-centric, intelligent,
flexible, scalable)
Smart accelerated components
Smart
Meters
Complex
Pricing
Energy
Efficiency,
Customer
Centric
Multi
Channel
Delivery
Solving Issues
Monetising
the Data
Cost of
Multiple
Billers
Solve Transform Evolve
Legacy co-existence
With the advent of smart metering and smart
grids, i.e., the real-time two-way connection of
meters to the utility to enable more frequent meter
reads, direct control of meters, a new requirement
for real-time billing has been created. Many
utilities have discovered that their current legacy
platform is unable to handle the more frequent
meter data intervals.
Convergys’ unique Solve and Evolve approach is
a low risk, low cost alternative that co-exists with,
rather than replaces legacy systems. By adopting
this ‘best of breed’ plug-in solution, utilities can
benefit from new, innovative functionality in key
areas such as billing and customer care while
extending the life of, and investment in, their
current legacy systems.

Convergys Smart Utility Solutions
Today’s customer is highly demanding. They want interactions with their utility company any time,
any way, anywhere. And you need to respond to these demands. But it’s more than just being more
responsive in the way you interact with your customers, it’s also about launching new products and
services, being proactive in communications to deflect customer issues before they happen, and
simply servicing the customer on their terms, in their timeframes.
Convergys Smart Utility Solutions
Convergys Contact Centre Services
Convergys Smart Suite
Intelligent
Speech
& IVR
Intelligent Speech & IVR
Inventory
Manager
Field
Service
Manager
Convergys
CRM
Rating
and Billing
Manager
Product
Control
Manager
Dynamic
Decisioning
Active
Mediation
Collections
Manager
Bill
Reporting
Manager
Process Outsourcing (BPO)
Contact Centre Consulting
Professional Services Business
Figure 2: Convergys Smart Utility Solutions:
best of breed modular products and tailored
services combined to address your utility’s
specific business challenges.
Addressing the challenges
Convergys provides Smart Utility Solutions – a combination of products and services designed to
address your specific business challenges. They are built on a unique business model that offers a
range of innovative and flexible products. The Convergys Smart Suite is a key component of Smart
Utility Solutions and is made up of revenue and customer management applications that can be
combined to super charge your meter-to-cash back office (see Figure 2). They have been purposebuilt
for utilities to exploit the true value of the smart grid, enabling you to respond to change,
become more flexible, and introduce new products, services and tariffs that will transform you into a
truly customer-centric organisation.

Convergys Smart Utility Solutions provide:
•
•
•
•
•
A productised approach: comprehensive, pre-integrated capabilities out of the box
Ease of integration with new or existing systems: GIS, legacy CIS, Collections and more
Real-time rating and billing capabilities that scale to handle smart meter volumes
Seamless and comprehensive, next-generation customer care: single view of customer,
consistent tools, configurable processes, better service, multi-channel
Outsourced contact centre services that meet your service level, cost and business
requirements.
At the heart of Convergys Smart Utility Solutions are three core offers – all designed to help
you address the escalating needs of your customers:
1. Convergys Rating and Billing Manager
2. Convergys Customer Relationship Manager
3. Convergys Contact Centre Services.
These three core offers are unique in their ability to deliver the full potential of a truly
powerful revenue and customer management system. They can be deployed in any
combination with other Convergys Smart Suite modules to address your specific business
challenges.

Convergys supports up to 90 million
end points for one customer, and has
over a dozen real-time deployments in
production today.
1. Convergys Rating and Billing Manager
Convergys Rating and Billing Manager provides both real-time and batch support to rate
and bill tariffs with unparalleled performance and scale for any type of utility service –
electric, gas, water, waste water and more. The system is adaptable and enables you to
tailor your billing to reflect your exact needs – quickly and cost effectively.
With proven performance and scalability to 90 million end points, Rating and Billing
Manager prepares your existing back office for the smart grid and scales to meet the
high volume demands required by smart meters – not only today, but as your business
expands and grows.
•
Tailoring utility rate plans to customers’ individual needs is easy and fast. You can
amend flexible rate plans to address demand response programs without modifying
the base tariff. This patented process accelerates the time-to-market for new and
personalised services, enabling you to better manage critical peak demand.
•
Rating and Billing Manager provides the ability to bundle disparate services – water,
gas, electric, telecoms services and event assets such as solar panels. If you can
measure it, we can calculate tariffs and bill for it.
•
Feed-in tariffs (calculating debits and credits based on the difference between a
customer’s energy consumption and generation) and dynamic pricing (rating a
customer’s energy consumption based on time of use) are demonstrated capabilities
of the system. With both of these, the flexibility does not stop in the back office – a
more granular level of data is available to display on the customer bill. The system
provides day-by-day or hour-by-hour usage and price information in addition to the
source of each KwH, to help drive changes in customer behaviour. of SpF
Rating and Billing Manager already contains the
core functionality to allow for electric vehicle
charging roaming costs – the ability for your
customers to charge their vehicle anywhere, but
paid for it through their standard utility bill.

2. Convergys CRM
How will your business cope when complex front office
to back office processes and inflexible systems make
innovation difficult – and enhancing the customer
experience almost impossible Today it’s all about
customer service. It’s about delivering consistent service
at every touch point at reduced cost and with increased
business efficiency.
Convergys CRM (CCRM), powered by Microsoft, is a
comprehensive customer relationship management
(CRM) solution that provides sophisticated sales, service
and marketing capabilities at a significantly lower cost
of ownership than other solutions. Built on Microsoft
Dynamics TM CRM platform, CCRM is pre-integrated
and configured to improve billing processes, customer
service, and time-to-market for new services. It is a
modular solution that optimises the entire customer
experience.
•
•
•
CCRM is easy to use and engineered to fit your
business, giving you customer-centric sales and
service
It streamlines and automates your customer services
processes and gives your call centre agents a single
view of the customer
It greatly reduces the cost and ongoing effort that
utilities typically experience when implementing a
CRM platform
• It’s so flexible that it works exactly the way you do: it
can be easily extended to meet constantly changing
market, business and regulatory requirements.

3. Convergys Contact Centre Services
Creating personal and proactive customer experiences
will foster loyalty and revenue growth. That’s where
we excel. No matter where or when your customer
interactions occur, Convergys enables positive,
integrated experiences, enabling you to capitalise on the
potential of anywhere, any channel, any time encounters.
By turning every connection into a superior experience,
Convergys Contact Centre Services will enable you
to grow customer relationships that drive loyalty and
profitability throughout the customer lifecycle. So whether
you are looking for outsourcing services or ways to
improve your in-house contact centre, we can help you
build more effective relationships with your customers.
Outsourced BPO
Maximise your customers’ service experience,
improving both their level of satisfaction and your cost
to serve. Convergys Contact Centre Services include
comprehensive outsourced business and consumer
customer support functions, as well as consulting
and technology services for in-house contact centre
operations.
The right customer solutions for the right reasons
Through our services and solutions you will increase
value from customer operations across the broader
enterprise. With Convergys, you’ll become more
proactive and productive, and will transform your
business into a relationship-centered organisation.
Intelligent Speech and IVR Solutions
We offer the latest technologies in advanced voice
portals and speech automation, real-time decisioning,
Web-based self-service, multichannel integration, mobile
services, and enhanced analytics to improve the quality
and value of interactions across self-service and agentassisted
channels.

Additional elements of Smart
Utility Solutions
In addition to these three key billing and customer
management capabilities, Convergys Smart Utility
Solutions can also include the following:
Convergys Collections Manager
Blocks revenue leakage points, reduces the cost
of revenue recovery, boosts revenue and margins
significantly, and returns 100% of collected revenue to
the bottom line.
Convergys Active Mediation
Streamlines the interaction between billing and the
network by standardising transactions and improving
two-way communications performance.
Convergys Product Control Manager
Creates, manages, disseminates, and uses product data
across both the enterprise and the product lifecycle.
Convergys Dynamic Decisioning Solution
Enables automated and proactive analytics through
a segmentation and rules-based application to drive
valuable customer relationships whilst empowering your
customer service agents.
Convergys Inventory Manager
Provides enterprise-wide functionality to ensure
comprehensive, centralised insight into widespread
logical and physical inventory items throughout the asset
lifecycle.
Convergys Field Service Manager
Optimises the workforce by proactively predicting
service demand and increasing field productivity through
planning, scheduling, and routing efficiency.
Convergys Bill Reporting Manager
Offers self-service web portal for display and analysis
of detailed usage, charges and billing information,
especially for C&I customers.

Don’t Replace Your Legacy Systems,
Make Them Smarter.
Clear business benefits
You no longer have to rip out your inflexible legacy
system and take on a multi-year wholesale replacement.
The unique Solve and Evolve approach provides
a proven, low cost and low risk alternative path to
next-generation systems. With this deliberate and market
based approach, delivery of Convergys Smart Utility
Solutions brings clear business benefits:
Scalability
With the advent of smart grid and smart meter
technologies, there will be a critical need for real-time
data handling. Existing legacy platforms struggle to keep
up with this explosive growth. Convergys solutions are
proven to handle data in volumes that smart initiatives
are only beginning to see.
Future-proof through system flexibility
Smart capabilities require complex and flexible rate
structures based on feed-in tariffs, time of use, and loadbased
activities to reduce peak energy consumption.
Demand response capabilities supported by real-time,
two-way data handling are key to offering effective
personal energy management programs. Furthermore,
rapid rate development and implementation enable the
agility that is critical in the evolving market. Convergys
provides the security of a solution that will handle the
unknown demands of the future.
Empowering the “new energy” customer
The relationship between a utility provider and its
customers is undergoing a significant change. A new
billing and customer consumption information solution
must enable you to put energy consumption control
in the hands of the customer while cost-effectively
supporting new product and service models. You can
encourage social responsibility by giving consumers
anytime, anywhere access to energy management.
Results without risk
An extensive array of deployment options effectively
eliminates risk associated with technology acquisition. A
rip-and-replace approach is not the only option. Taking
the Solve and Evolve approach, Convergys Smart Utility
Solutions run in parallel with existing back office systems
– mitigating impact on budget and staffing, providing
faster results, and allowing time to determine if and when
to transition all operations to the Convergys Smart Utility
Solution. Through an optional managed services model,
you only pay for the level of software services needed
to match the number of smart meters deployed at any
given time, aligning investment to value received.

Talk to the revenue and customer
management experts
As a global leader in billing and customer care, Convergys has
provided systems, services, and advanced deployment models
for more than 30 years. Convergys partners with global utility and
communications clients to enable business model transformation in
a rapidly changing environment. This experience provides us with
the technology and expertise to support you – the smart enabled
utility provider.

Convergys Smart Revenue Solutions
Convergys has more than 30 years’ experience
providing Smart Revenue Solutions to the utility,
telecommunications, cable, satellite and broadband
markets. With comprehensive revenue management
and customer care solutions, Convergys helps
organisations better understand, sell to, and serve
their customers to build stronger relationships.
Convergys’ future-proof solutions enable clients to
offer personalised, innovative services and delivery,
build customer loyalty, lower costs, and grow
revenues.
Convergys is a global leader in relationship
management enabling leading companies in
over 70 countries to deliver exceptional customer
experience. Convergys employs nearly 70,000
employees, speaking more than 35 languages, in
70 facilities across the globe, and routinely handles
more than two billion customer interactions every
year. Convergys is globally trusted and proven in the
market, reflected by the fact that it serves more than
150 clients globally.
To discover more about how Convergys Smart Revenue
Solutions can enable you to drive new revenues, visit
www.convergys.com/smart revenue or call:
• United Kingdom: +44 1223 705000
• United States: +1 800 344 3000
• Singapore: +65 6557 2277
• Brazil: +55 11 5504 6800
© 2011 Convergys Corporation.
All rights reserved. Convergys and the Convergys logo are registered trademarks of Convergys.
Convergys refers to Convergys Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiaries.
BR10 – Smart Utilities brochure – EMEA version – May 2011