Forecasting system must run in less than 12 hours

Using major data center, legacy system did not always finish in time

Utility also needed to increase system size and capacity

Utility needed to accurately bid in futures market

Fractal Programming enabled new demand forecasting system to be written and deployed in a single business quarter

Dramatically increased accuracy and number of scenarios that can be run

Uses full customer data set instead of just a data sub-set

System runs in minutes instead of hours

Added accuracy of forecasting 100% of the data, not samples, impacts millions of dollars of futures contracts each year

Key customer insight data is often located outside of systems-of-record

Valuable customer information is located department-level computers or desktop spreadsheets that are not accessible by systems-of-record

Customer entered and customer maintained data needs to be incorporated into customer insight apps

Public domain information (eg. tax records) must be incorporated into customer insights

Implement continuous real-time data import from systems-of-record

Implement continuous real-time data import from department-level computers and desktop applications

Implement continuous real-time data import from public domain sources

Implement continuous real-time data import directly from customers

Deeper key customer insight

Enables all customer information, regardless of where it resides, to be incorporated into 360 degree view of customer relationship and customer activities

Data provider service level agreements can be challenging to monitor, analyze and manage

Data service level shortfalls can lead to billing problems with customers

Quick early detection of data provider problems is needed to prevent downstream issues

Parallel meter data management system

Analyze all meter and sensor data to locate any missing data elements and test against service level agreement metrics

Reconcile all data to check for consistency

Machine learning module to identify unusual patterns that can indicate data issues

Increase in bill quality

Reduction is customer billing complaints and issues

The scale of customer base can make data management and automated communication challenging

Customers need to be able to update contact information and preferences to track changes in their internal organization

Contact information for problem notification can be different than billing contact

Customer portal that enables customers to update their contact information and preferences

Internal support portal for use by call center and key accounts team to track and update customer contact information

Customers proactively notified and updated on issues

Organizational and contact changes continuously tracked and updated

Customers want access to billing data on digital devices

Customers want to do scenario analysis for rate plans

Customers want budget forecasts

Customer want to supplement their data

Parallel customer care and billing system that is accessible from customer’s digital devices

Instant customer visibility to their real time bill

Customer can test different rate plans in real time

Customers have easy access to budget forecasts

Customers can self-service their data needs which frees up key account and call center resources

$10 million development cost savings and customer support cost reduction for customer information portal

Customers increasingly requesting programmatic access to their data

Large customers want convenient access to their entire portfolio of accounts and associated information

An API is necessary in order to make many third party services available to customers

Web services API’s are exposed as components of parallel systems for managing meter data, billing, and customer information

Customers can access the data both via interactive web portals and via programmatic APIs

Multiple data format supported (JSON, XML, CSV) as well as custom data formats

Increased customer satisfaction

No additional load on IT resources

Third party services easier to enable for customers

Weather data is required for many business functions and applications

Consistent weather assumptions must be made across multiple business processes and applications

Required weather data may need to be integrated from multiple data sources

Weather data management system

Integrates data from multiple data sources

Provides data at multiple levels of time granularity (5-minute, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly)

Data accessible via interactive graphical user interface(s) as well as application programming interface(s) API

Increased consistency across business processes

Increased quality and consistency in analysis and forecasting processes and applications