•  Currently evolving from a monopoly in a regulated market to a competition-based energy & service industry.

•  In future customers will able to choose from a number of defferent suppliers. Currently, the services associated with a given supply category are generally provided by a local utility company.

• Deregulation will break open the following value added chain
  Generation & Production à Transmission à Distribution à Customer Service

• Several utility companies and service providers participate in the value added chain of any supply category.

• price & service will be the key factors.

This change will demand

• Offer Customer Better Service

• Replace current contracts with new contracts

• Settle accounts for products and services and exchange data with other utilities.

• Support new billing scenario like unbundled billing and convergent billing.

• Forecast consumption pattern as accurately as possible.

• Provide information technology support for services at the customer site.

• Deploy new technologies.

• Analyzing market and strengthen marketing activities

An Customer Information Systems of Utilities companies in future must

• Satisfy the demands of deregulation

• Focus on customer

• Be very flexible

• Increase the company’s productivity

• Handle mass data

• Deregulation

IS-U/CCS- The industry specific component of SAP R/3 for Utilities Industry

To satisfy these demands, SAP has developed Industry-specific Component Utilities/Customer Care and Service (IS-U/CCS) customer information system.

  IS-U/CCS component is useful to companies operating in the following business

• Electricity

• Gas

• Water and waste water

• District heating

• Waste disposal

• Cable television connections

  Device management

Device Management of IS-U/CCS offers the following functions

• The capability to divide devices into device categories
• Meter and device procurement, warehousing and stock movements using integration with the Material Management (MM) module of SAP R/3
• Maintain installation structures with their existing relationship between meters, devices, registers and rate data.
•  Maintain rate reference values and other information about the purchase of power.
• Installation, removal and replacement of meters and devices.
• Device inspection and certification based on a sampling procedure or individual certification.

  Functions available in Device Management for meter reading & consumption recording are

• Create meter reading orders and documents in printed or machine readable form
• Enter meter reading results manually or automatically
• Conveniently connect external entry systems
• Validate meter reading results
• Correct or post-process meter reading results
• Monitor meter readings
• Valuate at flat rates consumption and demand on the basis of various replacement values.