Automate Natural Gas Utility / Marketer Transactions
Natural gas businesses must have processes in place to ensure efficient operations. Communication of data between Utilities and Marketers, however, is a leading area of inefficiency, especially when each market has a unique methodology for communicating both customer and pool data, such as enrollments, cancellations, MDQs, cycle and daily meter reads. In this regard, natural gas businesses typically manage manual processes that are time-consuming and error prone, increasing risk and negatively impacting margins.
Substantial effort is expended managing communications between Marketers and Utilities, largely due to an increasing amount of recurring data that is commonly manually transmitted between parties. Information originates from several sources, such as custom applications and spreadsheets, and then is converted into a standardized format. Next, this data must be validated and transmitted to the counterparty. With this information being bidirectional, counterparty uploads must be aggregated, contents deciphered, and the information then incorporated into existing processes. Such activity is laborious, prone to human error, consuming valuable time of operations personnel. This is where an automated approach to Utility / Marketer communications pays significant dividends.
Natural Gas Utility / Marketer transaction automation is more than just EDI connectivity. It eliminates manual effort, providing natural gas managers with a single trusted solution for Utility / Marketer integration. And, unlike manual management of communications, applying automation to the disparate Utility processes minimizes the need for human intervention, reduces labor costs, eliminates human error, and shortens processing time, which leads to shorter cash flow cycles and increased customer satisfaction. Using Natural Gas Utility / Marketer transaction automation, natural gas businesses can:
- Automate the transfer of end user information, including Enrollments, MDQs, Historical Usage, Nominations, Actuals, Billing details (Rate-ready/ Bill-ready), etc.
- Simplify any EDI connection via a configuration tool that supports any LDC and their unique EDI / non-EDI requirements.
- Administer exceptions through an integration dashboard with detailed management tools for auditing and analysis.
Data accuracy is the backbone of any business, and, in the Natural Gas world, a substantial amount of that data comes from transactions between Marketers and Utilities. Manually managed data transmission represents risk for data corruption, from files coming through incorrectly, being incomplete, or not being uploaded into the system properly – simply, many things can go wrong. Finding these issues and auditing Utility data is just another manual process preoccupying operations staff. Natural Gas Utility / Marketer transaction automation establishes a unique template for each utility, enabling the automation of the transactional process as well as its auditing. Operations staff will then be equipped to catch missing reads, reads that are out of line historically and much more via a standard automated reporting. In summary, there is a better way to handle communications between Natural Gas Marketers and Utilities and employing that better way will have a profound and positive impact on your business.
Producers, LDCs, Marketers, Pipelines, and Utilities face increasing competitive and compliance pressures, requiring increased operational efficiency, data integrity and process improvement. Their operational systems must support this, but most don’t. Engage us and we’ll show you how to make a breakthrough. It’s what we do for natural gas companies, and we are experts in our field.
~Ken
