Convergys Lights Up the Smart Grid with Smart Solutions

Convergys today announced the worldwide availability of Convergys Smart CIS Solutions, its next-generation billing and customer care solutions for the utility and energy markets.

The traditional utility business has been saddled with legacy systems designed to support low transaction levels. Not only are these legacy systems functionally challenged, they are also costly to operate, with small changes requiring months to complete and millions of dollars. In addition, existing billing and customer care options cannot fully realize the vision of the smart grid without a fundamental shift in the way they leverage data, manage customer relationships, and develop rate structures. Convergys designed its Smart CIS Solutions specifically to improve current utility operations while extending next-generation functionality and scale for future utility operations.

The new Convergys solutions include:

• Complete end-to-end CIS functionality, including Customer Management, Revenue Management, Collections, Inventory, Work Force Management, and Campaign Management, available as stand-alone modules or as a single fully-integrated solutions;
• Patented, flexible architecture enabling rapid configuration of new applications without costly customization changes to core code;
• A phased reference architecture enabling a “grow as you grow” footprint to advanced metering infrastructure and smart meter deployments; 
• Real-time, two-way, scalable, rate calculation and billing enabling innovative and dynamic pricing and rate structures;
• Multichannel customer relationship management tailored to handle utility products, processes, and data; and
• Real-time business intelligence applied via consistent and proactive policy management.  

“As smart grid rollouts expand, both the frequency and quantity of data are increasing exponentially. This puts extraordinary stress on the systems that manage the data, but also presents opportunities to better optimize operations and enhance the customer experience through automation and real-time actionable intelligence,” says Bob Lento, Convergys' president of information management. “Our solutions change the status quo of inflexible, costly, legacy systems. Convergys’ 25-year experience helping large multinational firms undergo network transformations gives us the technology and the process knowledge to ensure that our Smart CIS Solutions meet both current and future billing and customer care needs.”

“The smart grid will not be successful without the ability to put more information and choice into the hands of customers, empowering them to make wiser energy decisions. Utilities must carefully manage their customers both during and after smart meter deployment, particularly with regard to the introduction of time-of-use billing. Because the bill is the principal contact point a utility has with its customers, there must be a fundamental shift in the way utilities manage data, provide customer options, and bill for energy,” says Stuart Ravens, principal analyst at Ovum. "Convergys claims that its platform has been deployed at over 100 clients worldwide across multiple verticals processing nearly a trillion transactions annually. The vendor’s billing technology addresses many of the issues created by smart metering, and has been proven to work at a scale that will satisfy even the largest utilities.”