Initially published September 9, 2021
Sometimes, a severe jolt is a good thing to wake up someone from his deep sleep, if he is not listening to the normal request being made. This is what is being done by climate change to wake up people and stakeholders to get them out of their deep sleep of negligence towards the climate so that adequate measures are taken to lower the impact of our actions on the climate. Climate is affecting every one of us with its severe effects in the shape of winter storms, flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires. So, no one can deny the fact that climate change is a reality, and it is affecting the world in an extensive manner with every passing day. If things won’t be taken seriously in this regard by the stakeholders, then this climate change negative impact will continue to haunt the world with its devastations (Morgan, 2020).
There are many industries, which face a lot of problems due to catastrophic conditions created by the natural disasters happening as a result of climate change. However, it can be said that the utility industry faces the most horrific effects in this regard. The other important fact to keep in mind is that the utility industry has a huge role to play in decreasing its contribution to the essence of climate change. They need to adopt certain parameters with time to bring more environmental preservation in their processes. They can do a lot of things to ensure that their carbon footprints decrease and they continue to play a positive part in dealing with the issue of climate change.
When natural disasters like a hurricane, storm, or flooding occurs, the utility industry is the impact of these incidents more than any other industry. It is common that when flooding or storms rip through the cities, people have to face shortage or unavailability of utilities such as gas or electricity. During this difficult period, things get even more panicked for people as they face a blackout of utilities. The utility companies have to face a huge influx of inquiries made by consumers during this time. Everyone starts calling their utility supplier to know what has gone wrong, and when their utilities will be restored. Moreover, these natural disasters can also disrupt the installed utility system, and consumers may get wrong bills and calculations, once the disaster is over. So, problems for the utility companies remain there for many days even when the situation is under control after a hurricane or storm, etc. (Morgan, 2020).
The important thing for the utility industry is to realize the fact that they will continue to face such issues and there will be no one coming to their rescue until they update their billing and consumer handling system by upgrading their grid, as well as, technology to bring more efficiency and automation. The fact of the matter is that many utility companies are still using old-school billing and consumer handling systems, which have no automation or efficiency to meet the latest demands of the modern era. Some of these companies are even using the system, which they are using since the 1990s, and they have made no major Upgradation to their system. That’s why; they continue to face issues and challenges and also becoming a reason to affect the climate in a variety of ways. It is high time for the utility companies to understand that they cannot continue with an old school system, and these challenges will continue to rise if they don’t take the right steps now.
The good thing is that utility companies can get help and upgrade their systems by making partnerships with companies, providing modern utility billing and consumer handling systems, tailored to meet every demand of this modern era. They need to look for partners around them and shift their old system to an upgraded one, having new CIS/Billing. The beauty of modern cloud-based CIS/Billing system is that it can offer an enhanced utility experience and that too with an added advantage of increasing their operational efficiency. This new CIS/Billing system does have tools and resources to meet the needs of consumers in every given situation so that they are happy and satisfied with their utility companies (Barsamian, 2021).
This upgraded system allows utility companies to decrease their overall carbon footprint as they provide real-time monitoring of electricity usage by the consumers, which makes them more cautious about their utility usage. When they see that they are excessively using a utility, and wasting resources by getting real-time updates and monitoring; they control their overall consumption, which leads to cut costs. When consumers don’t waste energy resources, it has an overall positive effect by saving energy resources and bringing more controlled usage. In addition, less use of electricity will cause a minimum carbon footprint as energy generation will be reduced, and as a result, its negative effects will also be reduced. This is also a great thing for both utility companies and consumers to play a positive part by controlling the negative impact of climate change in so many ways.
If you are looking for a partner to upgrade your overall utility CIS/Billing system so that you adopt the modern trends of technology, which benefits both the companies and consumers, then you have a great partner waiting for you, powercloud. They are doing it for so many years and helped several utility companies to bring more efficiency and efficacy in their CIS/Billing system, which ultimately helped them to bring costs down, and flexibility up. powercloud uses technology-enabled with cloud and AI to provide an efficient system to manage consumer handling, their queries, calls, complaints, demand along with effective handling of future forecasts. The company has developed AI-based Chatbots, which have enough ability to improve the level of customer experience with conversational AI. They are committed to providing help to every utility company regardless of their size, issues, and demands. So, it is time to take this right step for utility companies to partner with powercloud and adapt to the challenges caused by climate change. They will not only get the satisfaction of their customers, but they would also get benefits such as lowered costs, increase efficiency, increases response rate, saving energy, and happy customers (powercloud, 2021).
References
Barsamian, A. (2021). What Is CIS Billing and Can It Help Your Utility Customer Experience? Retrieved September 8, 2021, from https://www.vertexone.net/blog/what-is-cis-billing-and-can-it-help-your-utility-customer-experience
Morgan, B. (2020). Climate Change Is Impacting Utilities. Here’s How New Technology Can Help. Retrieved September 8, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/08/27/climate-change-is-impacting-utilities-heres-how-new-technology-can-help/?sh=4e8fac946c29
powercloud. (2021). Partners Archives – powercloud. Retrieved September 8, 2021, from https://power.cloud/en/partners/
Steven Dawson
Steven Dawson, VP Sales at powercloud Americas Inc. brings more than +15 years of experience in the IT industry, working for companies as SAP, Oracle, and Genesys. In 2019, he built Salesforce Energy & Utilities (formerly Vlocity) in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from the bottom up. In his role, he found his passion and mission to help the Energy companies to reduce their overall Cost2Serve and Cost2Aquire but also helping them to achieve the best possible outcome for mastering their overall customer experience to their end consumers. His new mission at powercloud is now supporting the Energy & Utilities companies in North America by migrating away from old on-premises/legacy systems to a new modern architecture and billing platform in the cloud.