The Utility CIS Treadmill Challenge:

Competing capital requirements, an aging workforce, pressure to reduce costs, technology complexity, desire to improve customer service, and changing regulatory requirements are just some of the issues facing the utility industry. As market, regulatory and business requirements change, utilities find themselves struggling to change core customer systems and business processes. Often, the only solution is another costly implementation or upgrade.  Unfortunately, while hardware and software costs have significantly reduced over the past decade, the cost of implementation still remains high.

Some utilities have turned to full Business-Process Outsourcing (BPO) to overcome the complexity and capital requirements of in-house operations. However, many BPO relationships try to extract savings from the same aging and inflexible platforms that the utility could not and utilities may find themselves even more locked into inefficient and inflexible business processes and technology.

Service-with-software outsourcing
Individually, business process standardization, service-oriented architecture and outsourcing can help address some of these issues, but deployed together this powerful combination allows utilities to re-address the business case for core customer-facing services.

First Data Utilities' service-with-software model enables utilities to benefit from the latest systems and avoid the trap of the endless replacement and upgrade cycle, enjoy cost and performance predictability, focus on customer service, and benefit from flexible business processes and technology.

Our powerful combination of business process optimization and CIS service-with-software can help utilities drive down business risk in areas such as capital investment, regulatory change, complex technology, and financial uncertainty.

First Data Utilities’ service-with-software outsourcing includes: