19. April 2011 by admin.

How useful are user groups?  That’s very much dependant on how much the members contribute.  They can operate as workshops for ideas for maximising the existing version of the software and as forums for the vendor to discuss potential new ideas.  We always try to gauge the strength and role of the local user group when assessing an application’s suitability to implementing at a site, and the convenor of the nearest user group is always on our list of referees, whether the vendor has listed them or not.

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19. April 2011 by admin.

One of the issues a utility faces is theft by its users.  Most often this is occasional, where a fire house outlet is used to wash the adjacent floor.  Some however is persistent, where the consumer manages to by-pass the meter by intercepting the supply before it reaches the meter, and diverting it.  Water billing software can sometimes be used to detect this activity, by reporting on abnormally low consumption.  Most utilities concentrate on consumption that is abnormally high - no-one wants to send out a large bill if it is incorrect

Reviewing abnormally low consumption is done less rigorously, as there can be multiple reasons including a vacant property.  One of the more common requirements from those looking for a new water billing sytem is detecting when there has been low or zero consumption and then consumption rises - most usually when somneone has moved in and not advised the water company.  Monitoring low consumption for possible theft by itself is a lesser requirement, and is usually met when a meter reader visits the premises and observes a by-pass pipe.  However, with the increasing use of remote reads, a water thief may get away with illegal use for considerable periods of time if physical observation has been the main means of monitoring.  Water billing software in the future will need to provide more rigor in reviewing patterns of consumption, both high and low

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13. February 2011 by admin.

Water utilities continue to move towards remote automated meter reads to support their water billing software.  How such a solution will scale up remains to be seen.

For example, in Wisconsin the Baraboo Water Utility will begin replacing 4,578 aging residential, commercial and industrial water meters over the next few years with meters that can be read by remote control, the Barbaroo News Republic reports.  Interestingly the same story states that Council is also spending $26,600 for new water billing software, thus indicating yet again that large sums of money do not need to be spent to acquire simple water billing software.  The total contract is for $1.2 million for the meters, related computer software and services.  The metering supplier is H D Supply Waterworks of Sun Prairie, and the program for changing out the meters will be carried out over two-and-a-half years.  City workers will replace the old meters while a contracted management team calls residents and businesses to schedule days when workers visit them.

When installed every house and business will have a radio box and that box communicates with a central tower; all that data will go straight to the City Services Building.  The data will then be imported to the water billing software.

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27. January 2011 by admin.

Stories have hit the Johannesburg press about problems with the city’s new water and electricity billing software.  It’s the thing that all billing managers fear – stories of incorrect bills and angry consumers getting into the newspaper.  Neither of the stories have reported the name of the software being used, but the chairman of the Finance Committee is reported as saying “German specialists were periodically brought in because the billing system had been designed by a German company.”  That’s all pretty clear then.  However the problems as reported seem to lie not so much with the software but with the implementation.  Mayor Amos Masondo admitted that Project Phakama - to set up the new billing system - had not been implemented fully, with two of five modules not put into effect.  There also seems to have been an issue with customers old accounts not having been migrated to the new system.  The two stories – and you can bet there will be others – about the electricity water billing system can be followed up here and here.

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5. November 2010 by admin.

1. Billing projects are IT projects
2. Billing software is useful out of the box
3. Billing vendors will provide all necessary project management skills
4. I can manage my own billing project
5. All billing systems are the same
6. The budget for the project is the same as the quote I receive from the billing vendor
7. I can put the people on the project the business will miss the least

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24. October 2010 by admin.

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Posted in product manager, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »

1. October 2010 by admin.

Two recent news events highlight the triumph of hope over … reality?  Historically ERP implementations have been a failure for the public sector as government really is different.  In the City of Gold Coast, in Australia, the local government has decided to go ahead with implementing SAP as its whole-of-government system.  This includes a property tax billing module that has never been shown to succeed in Australia or New Zealand.  Those in the know cite Wollongong and Christchurch as two examples where an SAP implementation has been less than successful

In June it was announced that the city of Indianapolis and Marion County have embarked on a $16 million technology overhaul designed to improve business processes, standardize technology and drive down costs.  Under the planned three-year effort, the city will replace its ancient mainframe-based back-office systems with technology based on Oracle’s PeopleSoft ERP suite.  (That’ll be the one Larry Ellison tried to kill off shortly after he acquired the company via a takeover).

Computerworld comments that “Several similar efforts by other state and local governments have failed in dramatic fashion over the past few years”, but Indianapolis IT officials are hopeful they can pull it off successfully by keeping the project focused tightly on business process improvements rather than technological ones.  "We are going to focus on business transformation and not the implementation of technology," said Glen Baker, the city’s CIO. "We are committed to implementing the products as vanilla as we can" to minimize technical complexity, he said. "We have as much opportunity as we need to modify them later"

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29. September 2010 by admin.

I guess it had to happen.  There’s now a blog about IT project failures.  I’ve added it to the sidebar for this blog.  I was drawn to their most recent story about EDS being sued for $460 million for a failed CRM inplementation.  At last the victims of the promises Systems Integrators make are getting their own back

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27. September 2010 by admin.

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Posted in product manager, tax billing software, vendors, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »

25. September 2010 by admin.

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Posted in product manager, tax billing software, vendors, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »