Executive View
Top Level Objectives
Revenue assurance consists of processes which support timely and effective charges for service, accurate measurement of use, billing and receiving payment for services rendered. In addition, revenue assurance processes are supported by an organization's ability to establish and revise applicable rates and charges for services, which provide the appropriate level of cost recovery required to support sustainable operations. Three major factors impede an organization's ability to execute effectively around revenue assurance:
- Inability to understand the factors that lead to material financial gaps between metered and billed for services.
- Lack of a true understanding of operational costs on an activity level (labor, capital, energy, equipment and consumable materials) and the impact on operating and capital budgeting
- Delay in recognizing revenue due to slow payments or poorly designed remittance processing and accounts receivable processes
There are also market dynamics that make revenue assurance particularly challenging:
- Expectation of competitive rates for service
- Establishment of rates that meet customer expectations and ensure adequate funding of the operation
- Change Management as many Utilities transition to AMR technology (hybrid environment)
- Lack of visibility and control over operating costs at a detailed level
- Lack of decision/ problem solving insight to help resolve the gap between metered use and billed for use (i.e. loss water)
Rolta's solutions provide integration of operational data across CIS Billing, Accounts Receivable, GIS, Meter Reading and Asset Management to identify root causes for revenue loss by account and geography. KPIs are established based upon established work processes to support the identification and assessment of key rate drivers. Goals that can be achieved include reduction/elimination of loss revenue, identification of billing error impacts and alignment of the revenue planning processes with the operating context of the business.
Solution - Innovation
Rolta's solution includes an executive dashboard which provides insights to the key performance indicators and leading indicators that affect revenue. This solution integrates traditional business intelligence with spatial mapping and query capability in a manner that is directly usable by executive management. This solution can be provided as a standalone revenue assurance solution or as a component of a broader executive insight solution.
Advantage - Insight
With instant visibility to operational and financial status, the focus can shift from manual report generation to analytical analysis and action planning. This eliminates the need to wait for manual data compilation which is error prone, time consuming and subject to inconsistencies.
Benefit - Impact
Rolta's solution drives an improvement in operational performance and effectiveness.
Management View
Business Objectives
Revenue Assurance can be challenging because of:
- Inability to understand the factors that lead to material financial gaps between metered and billed for services
- Lack of a true understanding of operational costs on an activity level (labor, capital, energy, equipment and consumable materials) and the impact on operating and capital budgeting
- Delay in recognizing revenue due to slow payments or poorly designed remittance processing and accounts receivable processes.
Given these constraints, improved financial and operational performance can be difficult to achieve.
Solution
Rolta Geospatial Fusion Solutions connect systems, processes, and people in real time, eliminating the need to translate and move information. These solutions include industry leading spatial analytics, database connectivity, business intelligence dashboards and other powerful tools needed to build applications that provide a clear picture of the financial, service restoration, maintenance, safety and other key performance areas.
Rolta's solution provides:
- Improved service for citizens
- Improved problem resolution time
- Integration of operational data across systems and agencies to facilitate service center information visibility
- Use of spatial business intelligence to provide a performance dashboard for agency executives and service center managers
- Use of spatially enabled portals for two way communications between citizens and their government
- Reduced cost attributed to consolidation of call centers and agency information
Approach
Rolta's Services allow you to assess current operations and plan an effective strategy to harness the power of geography for bringing new investment into your area, making the case for infrastructure improvements, incentives, support, jobs and investment.
Business Value
There is no question about Government's motives to improve information availability and communications. But achieving these objectives while improving the efficiency of Government can be a real challenge. This is where Rolta's solutions can help. We have an integration platform that avoids costly custom programming. This keeps down implementation costs while providing enhanced visibility into the critical information required for efficient and effective Government.
Rolta Geospatial Fusion Solutions offer the ideal platform to help identify, measure, catalog and report key metrics and performance indictors throughout an organization.
Technical View
Technical Issues
Perhaps you are facing the following technical challenges that are common across governements:
- Multiple IT platforms and disparate systems within an organization
- Manual processes and/or spreadsheets required to look for patterns and analyze problems
- Operational data not readily assessable throughout the organization
- Inability to see critical information in a spatial context
- Inability to aggregate business and engineering information without significant manual work or duplication of data
- Trend analysis that is an adjunct and difficult task because of lack of data accessibility and lack of analytical tools
Solution Components
Rolta Geospatial Fusion Solutions fuses all core competencies, products and processes of an enterprise into a seamless architecture and world class offering. This extends the value of traditional business systems, GIS platforms and investments in engineering data maintenance by enabling an enterprise to have cost-effective integration of systems and create spatial business/operations intelligence capability. This improves performance by bringing together information that was previously hidden and making it available in a context appropriate for any level of decision-making.
Implementation
Rolta's Operational Intelligence Solutions are quick to deploy. Projects typically begin with needs assessments for the various stakeholders, which serve as the basis for identifying and prioritizing specialized requirements. Needs assessment and work process analysis are important elements to determine how the solution needs to be configured to meet organizational objectives. Business metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are also critical to identify early in the specification process so that dashboards can be created to meet the needs of executive and managers throughout the organization. You can be up and running within days with core capabilities and with a solution that is highly configurable rather than relying on a solution which is largely custom code.
Our implementation approach is built around standard software development methodologies that are focused on providing tangible results quickly and limiting the need for rework. Our implementation methodology includes:
- Assessment, Strategy and Planning
- Requirements
- Configuration/Construction
- Deployment and Transition to Production
How Does it Fit and Why is it Different?
Instead of focusing on one target system, Rolta's Geospatial Fusion Solutions are designed to "plug and play" with any GIS and business system. The traditional approach has been to translate or migrate the data from the target system into a new application or database. Rolta's Geospatial Fusion Solution can bring information together from various systems, without the need for transformation. Rolta's Operational Intelligence Solution provides:
- Geospatial analysis and visualization of trends, exceptions and alerts
- Decision-making across business functions and processes
- Real time monitoring of projects and operational processes
- Immediate visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Monitor or performance against organizational objectives
- Establish cause-and-effect relationships between or across business processes
