Billing edits and back office processing

1
Billing edits and back office processing

• Barry DeBald
• Sr. Information Management Analyst
• Baltimore Gas Electric

2
Speakers Work Experience

• 30 Years of utility experience
• Customer One implementation
• Pending Work Queue Administrator
• System Upgrades and Maintenance
• Customer Choice implementation
• Automated deposit implementation
• Outsourcing of remittance processing
• Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment FBA

3
BGE History

• First US Gas Company
• 1.1 Million customers
• Combined Gas and Electric Distribution Company
• Parent company is Constellation Energy
• Utilizes Customer One in a DB2 environment
• GUI Interface for Customer Care Representatives
• Gas Options (Deregulation) in 1997
• Electric Customer Choice (Deregulation) in 2000
• Pending Merger with FPL

4
Presentation Goals

• Identify the billing functions
• Answer the six survey questions
• Provide a QA session

5
Billing Functions

• Pending Work Queues Created by system edits
  -26,000 monthly / 315,000 annually.
• Hard copy work orders Created by
  representatives manual requests - 28,000 /
  345,000
• Data repairs Created by missing or incorrect
  system data - 250 / 3,000
• Manual billings 90 / 1,080
• Street Lights 350 / 4,200

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How do you define billing exceptions (edits)?

• System edits automatically generated by our
  legacy Customer Information System (CIS). Some of
  these edits are automatically reviewed and
  corrected by CIS while others require manual
  intervention.
• There are also a significant number of Hard
  Copy request that are manually generated and
  completed.

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How do you categorize what causes them?

• Pending Work Queue (PWQ) types
• Service order edits
• Meter reading edits
• Prebill Edits
• Billing edits

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How do you measure success in completing them?

• 99 Billing Accuracy
• When we have the ability to correct edits online
  with minimal manual intervention

9
What are some of your high/Low targets for
diverting a bill to your back office?

• Residential bills 2,000 greater than previous
  month
• Commercial bills 4,000 greater than previous
  month
• Both high and low meter index edits derived by
  applying a multiplier to the previous
  months consumption. Multiplier is variable,
  depending on tariff schedule.

10
Are you manual or computer based for the
exception correction?

• Both manual and computer based corrections
  exist. Computer based solutions are enlisted
  where practical. Manual solutions are employed
  for more complicated problems.

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What are your scorecard targets for billing
exceptions?

• Complete 90 to 98 of exceptions within the
  billing cycle.
• Prioritize the remaining exceptions based on 30,
  60, and 90 day aging.

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Summary

• Pending Work Queues (PWQ) are system based
  edits, some are auto-completed by CIS, some are
  completed by human intervention.
• There are four main PWQ categories.
• Hard copy work orders are generated through CIS
  and generally completed by human intervention.
• The goal is to complete 90 to 98 of exceptions
  within the billing cycle.

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Q A

• Questions?

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Contact Information

• Barry DeBald
• BGE
• 110 W. Fayette Street, 2 Center Plaza
• Suite 620
• Baltimore, MD 21203
• barry.j.debald_at_bge.com
• Telephone [phone]