Natural Gas Billing … How nGenue Makes a Difference
In an earlier post, Natural Gas Operations … the way it should be!, I made reference to more granular feedback received from nGenue users – how nGenue is making a difference to their businesses – in their own words. Subsequently, Natural Gas Operations … How nGenue Makes a Difference detailed a first wave of nGenue User feedback. Following is nGenue User feedback specifically associated with Natural Gas Billing to which, no doubt, you can also relate:
| BEFORE nGenue | WITH nGenue | Business Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidations were only available one way, and not the way we wanted them processed. | We implemented our Liquidations process, the way the business wants, no longer limited by what our previous software permitted. | Better customer experience through clear contract language surrounding liquidations and better recoup of cash with minimized risk. |
| Support for swing or price locks was non-existent. | We are now able to fully execute our customer contracts as they are written, with the correct terms, rates, etc. | No longer leaving money on the table, accurately reporting for key items, such as margin, CTS, etc. |
| No support for rate class level information. | We can now properly report on taxes and other regulatory items. | Reduced risk and better customer experience. |
| Inability to manage customer rate changes in a timely manner resulted in overlapping dates and customers that didn’t have the correct rate properly applied to their account. | We now enjoy automated and seamless LDC rate changes, applying customer rates in a timely manner and with no overlapping dates on accounts. | Accounting has correct forecasts, unbilled customers are easily identifiable and we now have a solid remittance / reconciliation process. |
| We lacked the ability to calculate daily cashouts using daily floating index rates.. | nGenue functionality enabled calculation of daily cashouts and feeding the total WACOG cashout value into the current billing process. | We no longer maintain separate (any) spreadsheets, nor must we manually input the WACOG cashout values – nGenue calculates it all during our normal billing processes. |
| For our rate ready and single bill customers, we were unable to verify we were receiving proper payments from LDCs. | nGenue generates a shadow bill for every meter read that comes through from the LDCs. It also processes incoming receipts from LDCs and automatches these amounts with expected amounts. | We can now confirm volumes, prices, sales taxes, and cash receipts, with exceptions logged automatically for review. |
| In addition to our retail customer contract quantity, we needed to be able to sell incremental daily volumes at various prices. | Complex Pricing functionality enables specific incremental daily sales that layer on top of monthly contract quantity. | We can now price our incremental sales individually, properly reflected when passed to our ETRM system. |
| Our Risk Management system was only capturing the retail volumes that were explicitly defined in the triggered or contract quantities – actual usage exceeding those contract volumes was excluded. | nGenue supports a combination of contract quantities with forecasted usage volumes. Both are included in the physical positions going out into the future for risk management. | Looking into the future, we can see not only the total contracted volumes, but also the total retail demand broken down by each retail market. |
End Users, LDCs, Marketers, Pipelines, Producers, 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.
nGenue enables Natural Gas Operational Excellence!
~ Ken
