This was an ASUG webcast given by the ASUG Utilities SIG last year. Below are my notes.
The SAP speaker said “we are living in a digital age”.
Long gone are the days when people walk into a bank to pay a bill or call into a call center to start /stop a service.
Just having a simple website for a utility is not enough, said SAP
Customers today have expectations; they want it now “on their fingertips”
More about millenials – Facebook, Twitter – users are connected everywhere and at all times
They are socially networked; they are channel agnostic and expect great user experience across all channels.
They expect apps
Figure 1: Source: SAP
“Old channels never die” they just become complementary to new channels
There is a “Galaxy of applications”
Utility needs to support its applications and third parties
How does a utility do all that without breaking the bank?
Figure 2: Source: SAP
If there is a requirement to have a self-service portal, becomes a big implementation project
Then the requirement for to support a third party application for energy comparisons
Utilities have “point-to-point” clutter – it is expensive and does not scale
Figure 3: Source: SAP
With multichannel foundation for utilities it is channel agnostic; if outages due to storm and traffic to your website – it is scalable.
It offers out of box features for self-service billing, payment outages
It uses open standards REST and OData
It is robust and comes with ready-to-use applications
Figure 4: Source: SAP
SAP provides apps on various channels like web and mobile
SAP is working with partners to develop consumer applications that take advantage of MCF
SAP will continue to enhance multi-channel applications – continue to provide simplified and unified access to the apps
Figure 5: Source: SAP
Demo: MCF in action
Customer has moved to a new house
He is shopping but has not signed up for utility
He sees kiosk in store; equipped with product finder tool – search for products and sign up
Figure 6: Source: SAP
He can search for products and sign up for the service
He sees consumption cost changing in real time
Figure 7: Source: SAP
He walked out of store with gas and utility contract
He logs to customer self-service on his iPad, clicks on alerts
Figure 8: Source: SAP
Figure 8 shows an overdue invoice
Figure 9: Source: SAP
Then the logs on to desktop utility site to make payment
Figure 10: Source: SAP
Customer sees consumption history
More to come.
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