CIS Series
As a company that meters and bills customers for a commodity (like electricity, gas, water, or wastewater), you know how important it is to provide a seamless customer experience and maintain a streamlined process, from start to finish.
A seamless customer experience means answering the questions your customers are asking. It includes a number of moving parts, like:
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calculating and producing bills,
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being the go-to source for all customer-related information,
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handling all payment and collection information,
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and facilitating activities in the field – like replacing a meter.
Providing this type of experience from start to finish is no easy feat.
That’s where a Customer Information System (CIS) comes in.
A CIS is one of the most important applications within a Utility. Its’ ability to obtain enormous amounts of information and enable back-office and field activities from a single, unified place means that a CIS not only makes the processes within your Utility more efficient, it also acts as a dependable system that customer service reps, billing clerks, collection staff/agencies, meter shop people, engineers, financial analysts, and management can also rely on to do their jobs.
When it comes time to alter your company’s CIS in any way or replace it with a completely new application, the effect the change has on the people, processes, and technology within your Utility is massive.
Companies often spend years planning their CIS initiatives, invest valuable time in the regulatory ‘approval’ process, and spend millions (often tens of millions) to replace their existing system.
Kaihen will be adding more content to this page focusing on different aspects of the process. Throughout this series, we’ll provide insights into Utilities and open up a discussion and debate forum, where you can discover key aspects to consider when planning or delivering your CIS project.
CIS Procurement Options
In this whitepaper, discover what CIS Procurement Options are available to Utilities and essential factors to consider during the process.
CIS Cloud Decision
A key question that many Utilities are currently asking themselves is whether they want to stay On-Premise or go with a CIS application vendor’s Cloud offering. Every Utility is different, including yours. This means that each Utility has its own unique factors to consider when deciding if it wants to go with a Cloud CIS.
This whitepaper provides guidance to Utilities on how best to make their CIS Cloud decision.
CIS Optimization
In this whitepaper, we discuss our thoughts on how to optimize your customer experience business processes, as well as optimize the customer organization, the CIS application, and surrounding technology. We share our recommended CIS Optimization Journey and Approach.