Case Study: Reduced unbilled debt resulting in collections uplift of £20m over 18 months.

Graham Mathie - 29/11/2023

Background

Our client a mid-sized, multi brand Utility company supplying energy to 170,000 customers, UK wide, required support to significantly decrease the unbilled position across both brand portfolios; an issue created by data quality issues and limitations within the CRM and billing systems which differed for each brand.

What did we do?

• Carried out data reconciliation work to ensure an accurate position and to support the accurate categorisation and segmentation of customers.
• Utilised this segmentation to target pots of customers with the most appropriate resolution for their root cause.
• Full diagnostic conducted using payment, metering, billing, debt and complaints data, and subsequent relational assessment to understand barriers to billing
• Categorisation, segmentation and root cause analysis of entire unbilled portfolio, using bulk and individual testing to validate findings or support further segmentation.
• Implementation of a process for the handling of unbilled with a reprioritisation by volumes and values of these segmented pots of customers.
• Assessment of all systemic rules across both CRMs to see where actions can be taken to amend certain parameters, if applicable.
• Improved reporting and analytics built out to ensure accountability and tracking of progress.
• Identification of other areas impacting unbilled position to create multiple cross-departmental workstreams (e.g., Erroneous EAC/AQ for meter reads, no DD set-up).
• Management of all related billing concerns and activity with a new strategic approach, reprioritising how complaints were handled to maximise impact of this approach.

Benefits Realised

• The clearance of £23.3m of unbilled, ensuring the number of accounts classed as overdue was less than 7% of the portfolio.
• The relevant actions that impacted other departments also led to a £9.7m increase in revenue through optimisation of direct debit reviews (£4.8m), final payment collection processes (£1.9m) and a more refined and aligned approach to revenue collection between our billing and revenue assurance teams (£2.8m).
• Improved data quality control framework and portfolio reporting providing insight on a plethora of items including billing status, COT status, metering detail and debt risk.
• A more efficient set of parameters and rules within the systems aligned to the business values and risk appetite

With our combination of data expertise, thorough understanding of utilities customer and billing data gained over many years, Clyde Ventures can help you to transform your billing operation unlocking potential revenue and minimising regulatory risk.