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This first appeared on ESI Africa.

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This is proving abundantly clear in the African utilities sector, where non-payment, consumption-based fraud, illegal connections and other factors are costing billions in lost revenue.

Power utility Eskom recently revealed that . This has led to a R51-billion debt by municipalities, adding to Eskom’s significant R400-billion debt burden and hampering the utility’s plans to build additional capacity or its transition to renewable energy.

In East Africa, Kenya Power has investigated cases of fraud in its post-paid billing system, .

This issue is prevalent in the utilities sector of other regions too. A 2017 study estimated that . This places enormous pressure on utilities and hampers efforts to improve service delivery to customers, adopt new, more sustainable forms of energy, and scale into new markets.

Revenue assurance mitigates fraud, reduces losses

In the utilities sector, several factors contribute to lost revenue, including faulty metering, inaccurate billing, ineffective revenue collection, consumption-based fraud, leaks, and issues with incorrect customer accounts and contracts.

As the sector shifts to meet the utility needs of a growing population – Africa’s population is expected to – and pressure grows to move to more sustainable, less carbon-intensive forms of energy, maintaining high levels of revenue collection will be critical.

A vital component of optimal revenue collection is the practice of revenue assurance.

Revenue assurance is a way of increasing an organisation’s income by identifying areas where revenue is lost, and minimising such losses by fixing the cause of lost revenue.

found that it takes an organisation twelve months to detect a typical fraud case, with the average annual loss across industries amounting to $1.8-million. In fact, an estimated 5% of revenue is lost to fraud every year.

In response, organisations need to leverage the power of technology to improve fraud detection, risk mitigation and fraud prevention capabilities.

Using a revenue assurance tool is one way for utilities to detect anomalies earlier. This can help them reduce financial loss, improve the accuracy of detection at a lower cost, and improve their ability to predict and prevent future occurrences of revenue leakage.

Leveraging tech to improve revenue collection

A growing number of utilities are using tools such as 51风流Business Integrity Screening in combination with 51风流partner solutions to improve revenue assurance and plug any gaps in operations that may lead to revenue loss.

By leveraging powerful analytics and big data capabilities, revenue assurance tools help utilities identify potential cases of fraud and proactively inform technical teams to investigate.

For example, if a customer’s energy consumption stays exactly the same month after month despite seasonal changes, there is a likelihood that some form of fraud is being committed. Energy use usually increases and decreases in different seasons, with most customers using less power in summer when it’s warm compared to winter when heaters are used and electrical hot water heaters work harder to stay warm.

By tracking energy consumption patterns over long periods of time and matching that data to seasonal consumption models, utilities can leverage their revenue assurance tool to ensure they always collect the optimal revenue from every customer.

By using predictive models and integrating the revenue assurance functionality to their enterprise resource planning core, utilities can develop a better understanding of known customer usage patterns. Over time, utilities can apply this knowledge to develop detection methods and strategies that can highlight unknown patterns that may indicate fraud or revenue leakage.

African utilities are at a pivotal moment as booming population growth and rapid economic development pushes them into building greater capacity while also transitioning to a clean energy future. However, without optimal revenue collection, utilities will lack the financial agility to survive and thrive during this disruptive time.

With the clever application of technology, however, utilities can mitigate the risk of fraud and ensure they have the financial stability to take a leading role in our continent’s development and just energy transition.

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With 770 million people currently living without access to energy, Bboxx was founded in 2010 to end energy poverty. Bboxx manufactures, distributes and finances decentralised solar powered systems in developing countries. Through affordable, reliable and clean energy provision, the company is positively impacting the lives of over 2 million people with its products and services. Bboxx is delivering its products and services to underserved customers in rural areas through its innovative technology Bboxx Pulse庐 which is Bboxx鈥檚 own state-of-the-art comprehensive management platform. Bboxx Pulse庐 enables the growth of next generation, global distributed utility businesses and enables them to manage scale as customers, employees and products are dispersed across remote locations.

This requires a strong accounting and supply chain backend, so Bboxx was looking for a cloud-based platform that would provide scalable market leading software and embedded best practice to help expand its footprint into new markets. Bboxx selected聽聽鈥� Supply chain and Finance with聽, an exclusive program for hypergrowth companies. Phase 1 of the project went live in Asia in May 2021. This is just the beginning, Phase 2 is due to go live in the UK, France and Rwanda in September 2021, and Phase 3 in DRC, Kenya, Togo and Nigeria in December 2021. During Phase 3聽聽will integrate with Bboxx Pulse庐. The 51风流Business ByDesign implementation is being handled by business transformation and Grow by 51风流partner聽.

Using 51风流ERP, finance and supply chain solutions, Bboxx will gain significant efficiencies through widespread automation of processes and using best practice principles embedded in SAP. Having a single cloud base instance for finance and supply chain will help Bboxx achieve a globally consistent process and still allow for local reporting needs.

Anthony Osijo, Group CFO at Bboxx, said: 鈥淏boxx is currently operating in 10 countries, and we have bold ambitions to hit 23 countries within five years. We are positively impacting 1.8 million lives directly with the provision of clean, reliable, and affordable energy. We want to accelerate access to power in developing countries and continue to transform lives and unlocking potential through access to energy. Because of the scale of these targets, it鈥檚 vital to have a strategic global partner like 51风流that is flexible and innovative enough to want to work with us on that journey.鈥�

Romain Gauthier, Regional Vice President 鈥� New Customers EMEA North at SAP, said: 鈥�51风流was the right partner to support Bboxx鈥檚 bold mission to end energy poverty across the globe by providing a highly flexible and scalable single cloud infrastructure. Grow by 51风流program has been specifically designed to support fast growth scaleups and startups and will provide Bboxx with advanced supply chain, finance and accounting, and customer service across three major continents, whilst also ensuring that it retains its competitive cost base. When it comes to helping businesses expand their footprint and grow into new markets, 51风流is a true strategic partner.鈥�

The post Bboxx Goes Live with 51风流To Accelerate Global Access To Clean Energy appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Given our commitment, we are thrilled that for the second consecutive year, 51风流SuccessFactors was chosen as one of Gartner Peer Insights and was the only company to receive .

is a free peer review and ratings platform designed for enterprise software and services decision-makers. With more than 315,000 verified customer reviews across 330 defined markets, it allows customers to share information with each other in order to increase their confidence and success when purchasing new solutions. Peer reviews are driven solely by the specific experiences relative to the reviewers, including their satisfaction with a product, as well as overall experience, support for the product or service, and overall implementation effort. The Customers鈥� Choice distinction is based on the number of reviews and overall user ratings.

With more than 6,850 customers representing all industries and spread out across the globe, we are grateful for those who share their experiences, best practices, and feedback.

Here are a few from customers:

• “System is intuitive and user friendly. Being a cloud solution, it is accessible from anywhere, and the mobile app capability encourages people to use it wherever they are.鈥�
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• 鈥淎 time-saver tool to view, track, and assess all HR-related processes.鈥�
  鈥�
• “The various team members assigned to our account are supportive and reliable. I feel valued as a customer.鈥�
  鈥�
• “Matured [51风流Successfactors] Employee Central module. HCI integrations are great along with integration center.”
  鈥�
• “Great features and excellent support.鈥�
  鈥撀�

To learn more about this distinction, visit the Gartner Peer Insights page. View the .

Marc Havercroft is chief customer officer for 51风流SuccessFactors.

Disclaimer: Gartner Peer Insights Customers鈥� Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post 51风流SuccessFactors Named 2020 Customers鈥� Choice for Cloud HCM Suites by Gartner Peer Insights appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

The celebration, which marked the official go live of the 51风流system, heralded a new era of efficiency and accountability in the EEU’s billing and reporting capability. It is another step in the ongoing commitment of the Ethiopian government to improve the overall economics and service of the electricity supply industry. The sector has been reviewing its operations across the board to identify opportunities to improve in areas such billing and collections, private investment in generation, capacity building and tariff management.

The EEU operates in a highly complex environment and serves customers in cities across all eleven regional states. It faced challenges in delivering services efficiently while also maintaining full visibility and accountability across all its systems. 51风流ERP and 51风流CRM were selected by EEU to streamline processes and provide real time visibility. The new system also enables EEU to quickly identify any issues and resolve them promptly, to ensure top class customer support.

“51风流is committed to helping companies run better,” said Pedro Guerreiro, Managing Director for 51风流Central Africa. In his address at the opening event, he spoke about the need for partnership and working together across private and public sector. “By smartly leveraging technology, EEU is taking steps to become an intelligent enterprise, able to thrive in the digital age and able to offer its valued customers an enhanced customer experience. We look forward to our ongoing partnership to ensure EEU remains not only the pride of Ethiopia, but a role model for other organizations contributing to economic growth in Ethiopia and the Continent”.

This article first appeared on .

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