Natural Gas Billing Software Selection
Remember my blog, Billing Software Purpose Built for Natural Gas Transactions? It turns out at least a few Natural Gas Marketers read it and reached out to us with requirements – I LOVE IT when this happens! And I am delighted to share with you what we learned from these companies. Let me start by supplying some background.
All three are Natural Gas Marketers serving different geographic markets – no overlap. Each has been using a different software product that has failed to meet their needs – not designed for natural gas, but rather offering either general purpose Utility billing functionality or software designed for Power and adapted [weakly] for natural gas. At least two of the software vendors are “regulars” and current sponsors of industry events like EMC and LDC Forums – fire a note my way if you wish to know their names.
When gathering business requirements, at nGenue we seek to understand the Marketers’ previous billing system experiences and their motivations for considering nGenue’s designed-for-Natural Gas billing capabilities. Here is what these Marketers reminded us of:
- General-purpose Utility billing software “doesn’t get Natural Gas” and using spreadsheets to compensate for shortcomings is not the answer.
- Billing software designed for Power and adapted for Natural Gas does not deliver innovative software enhancements a natural gas business expects and requires.
- Vendors who demand payment to fill a gap in product functionality represent a Red Flag.
- Selecting software based on a generic vendor demonstration is a bad idea.
- Vendors who charge a seemingly limitless series of line-item fees (per meter, per market, per invoice, per transaction, per file, etc.) are a threat to your profitability.
- An offshore team of overnight manual labor is not the same as software-managed automation.
Like others, these three natural gas marketers acquired general-purpose or Power-adapted software products only to pay the upfront price and substantial operational life cycle penalties of software that was not designed for the intricacies and nuances of a natural gas business. Myself and my team have had countless conversations with organizations like these, who painfully discover there is no substitute for software explicitly designed for natural gas operational requirements such as billing and that the financial consequences of making do with software that fails to meet the needs of a natural gas business are immense, especially when it is software as important as billing is to the business revenue stream.
As one client stated, “Although much of what we do is standard within the industry, we do have unique customer structures and products that we offer to our customers. The billing system must be capable of supporting these types of use cases.” nGenue understands the importance of fit for purpose and routinely demonstrates out-of-the-box nGenue functionality capable of addressing use case-specific requirements. Further, accommodation of client-specific functionality enhancements is nGenue standard practice – to be expected from a software company committed to enabling its clients achieve Natural Gas Operational Excellence.
Marketers, Producers, LDCs, Utilities, and Pipelines face increasing competitive and compliance pressures, requiring increased operational efficiency, data integrity and process improvement. Their operational systems must support this, but most do not. Engage us and we will show you how to make a breakthrough. It’s what we do for natural gas companies, and we are experts in our field.
– Ken
