Utility Customer Information Systems to Reach $911 Million

The market for utility Customer Information Systems (CIS) and billing solutions is on the brink of a major transformation as many leading utilities have already started an overhaul of their systems infrastructure.  With a large number of systems that are more than 20 years old and designed for a simpler business model of regulated electricity distribution, utilities’ Smart Grid initiatives are having a heavy influence on the selection of more comprehensive and integrated systems that can handle data feeds from smart meters, time-of-use and real-time pricing, and demand response programs. 

The worldwide market for CIS is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.7 percent over the next five years.  The market was just over $600 million in 2010 and is forecasted to be $911 million in 2015, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study. 

CIS is Customer Care and Billing and/or a form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that address business-critical utility M2C (meter to cash) and customer care business processes.  The CIS products cover two core utility lifecycle processing areas, revenue management and customer management.  The CIS solutions reach into two additional areas, commodity management and service delivery management.  They go beyond CRM.

“With regionalization, privatization, deregulation, and higher customer service expectations, utilities are scrambling to rise to meet today’s challenges through improved customer relationships and enhanced customer options.  CIS is used to track customer information, generate bills, issue service requests, and manage customer relationships by providing utility representatives information and insight about each customer’s individual needs and preferences,” according to Steve Clouther (sclouther@arcweb.com ), the principal author of ARC’s “Customer Information Systems Worldwide Outlook".

CIS Is North America Centric
North America clearly dominates the CIS market (76 percent share), and it will continue that way in the near future.  However, there is a burgeoning market in the UK, and that is slowly spilling over to the continent.  Europe represents just over 13 percent of the global CIS market, and while the utility markets in Europe are large and well established, there are a number of factors affecting CIS acceptance there.  First of all, the utilities and technologies are there, but there is more of a mind-set and culture dealing with ‘Customer Information’ in Europe than in the US.

Utilities Investing in Commercial CIS
As a general rule, the utility companies have developed their own in-house CIS, and the stop-and-start deregulation is a catalyst for these systems to now be replaced by the commercial-off-the-shelf CIS that are now available.  This provides the opportunity to bring the latest technologies into play, as the utilities grapple with the Smart Grid and advanced metering infrastructure.

Newer Technologies for CIS
The commercial CIS are delivering systems that are more componentized for easier and quicker implementations. They are also addressing analytics, so utilities can provide its customer service representatives advanced business intelligence for predicting customers' concerns and behaviors, thus enabling customer service representatives to more easily and quickly address customer concerns. 

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