Kansai Electric Power Company, Inc. (Kansai), the retail arm of one of Japan’s largest integrated power utilities, is using Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to provide customers with new rate options and services that can increase satisfaction. Today, Kansai is using the offering to consolidate data across approximately 5.1 million total customer units. With a single source of customer information, the utility can better manage customer service interactions and deploy new services, such as special rate menus for customers who use electric water heaters or shift appliance usage to off-peak hours to reduce electric charges. Oracle Consulting supported this deployment.
“While our business environment remains uncertain due to international events causing soaring resource prices, we remain deeply focused on business activities that promote safe and reliable customer service, high levels of customer satisfaction, and a zero-carbon society,” said Masanori Doman, general manager, solution division plan department, Kansai Electric Power. “With access to new, invaluable customer data and a billing engine supporting more flexible rates, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is providing an important step in our journey to offer attractive customer choices and reliable services. With the Oracle solution, we are able to combine parts, change unit price settings, and use the copy function, among other features, to ensure a speedy market launch at low cost.”
Kansai’s customer value approach
Running on Oracle Exadata, a high-performance platform for Oracle Database, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is a complete billing and customer care application designed to manage complex utility processes. The combined Oracle solution is supporting Kansai’s larger digital transformation goals and helping to reduce the lead time and implementation costs for launching new service offerings.
Before developing new services for customers, Kansai conducts market research, identifies potential cross-promotional links with other industries they serve, and sets up multiple services. The utility then develops new rate menus using a framework on Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing without impacting its overall system operations. Using the solution’s billing features, the utility can also consolidate financial information from multiple accounts into a single statement.
Kansai increases service development options by combining new cloud services from the business marketplace with Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. This enables the utility to break away from conventional, rigid development and provide versatile systems that meet users’ demand. Kansai will continue to position Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing as its core system and actively adopt other services to establish systems that meet this rapidly changing business environment.
“By providing a critical, energy-specific customer information system, Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud and Billing gives Kansai tremendous assets to thrive in the highly competitive, unregulated Japanese energy market,” said Michael Trinder, vice president for Japan and Asia Pacific, Oracle Energy and Water. “As Kansai continues its digital evolution, Oracle’s platform provides a solid foundation for expanded, value-driven customer offerings that can help improve satisfaction and further diversify revenue streams.”
Oracle has a proven track record of customer service and billing projects across the globe.
