Top Billing

With five million customers in 11 states, American Electric Power is one of the biggest electric utilities in the US; therefore ensuring that an effective billing system is in place is essential. To meet the enormous task of billing customers the company has in place is the Anderson/Accenture Customer One system – 3270 interface that is known as MACSS/OPS, for Marketing, Accounting, and Customer Services System/Order Processing System.

Billing processes are one of the most underrated competitive assets in business. Clarity, accuracy and timely bills are appreciated by customers and create a high level of trust and goodwill between them and an organization. Therefore, getting a competent system in place is crucial. “With the emerging emphasis on demand response pricing and the increasing need to provide customer self-service functions via the internet, billing systems that are easily adaptable to support these functions can give utilities a competitive edge,” highlights Yang. “The ability to have a system with the flexibility to quickly add new billing functions would be a significant advantage, especially in deregulated markets.”

An independent system known as VERX is one of the accuracy and efficiency safeguards the company has in position to validate nightly billing and rate changes while the Order Processing System processes service orders, interfacing with AEP’s Distribution Work Management System. “It is this interface that allows orders originating from AEP’s call centers to be routed to servicemen in the trucks, then sending completed work information back to the Orders Processing and Distribution Work Management systems,” explains Yang.

Yang outlines how a graphical user interface or Windows front-end to MACSS/OPS, called Virtual Agent, is used at AEP’s six Customer Solutions Centers. Customer accounting and Revenue reporting functions are also provided by MACSS either natively or via a Business Objects database known as Triad.

Since its implementation a significant amount of functionality has been added to the system. These include support of deregulated billing for AEP’s jurisdictions under Customer Choice, and other functional enhancements that automate AEP’s customer operations environment. Yang outlines how the current MACSS/OPS system has an advantage over other billing systems in its table-driven parameters. “These codes tables are used to configure traditional tariffs, surcharges, and fee structures without the need for coding changes,” explains Yang. “However, many of the non-traditional rate designs being approved today present challenges because they do not fit rate structures that have been established in the system.”

Challenges during implementation

According to Yang there were a few problems faced by the company during the implementation phase including a number of AEP’s operational jurisdictions deregulated during their conversion to MACSS/OPS. “This change in operational models placed an extra challenge on the conversion process,” he recalls. “The strategy of consolidating all of the AEP jurisdictions into one CIS system has added complexity to the ongoing enhancement and maintenance support processes for MACSS/OPS. In support of the diversity of our regulatory landscape, MACSS/OPS performs billing and customer service functions for jurisdictions regulated in the traditional manner, deregulated, and quasi-regulated. This diversity of regulatory models and system interface points carries with it many implementation and support challenges.”

Having had feedback from customers there are a couple of improvements suggested by a small percentage in order to improve the current system. These include the need for better estimating algorithms when their bills are estimated whilst internal customers have a desire for quicker turnaround for functional enhancements they request.

The company is currently in the process of evaluating its CIS strategy and determining whether to extend the life of the system or to consider a replacement. “The decision will balance the cost of fulfilling the emerging billing and customer service requirements by extending the functionality of MACSS against the cost of implementing a replacement CIS system,” says Yang. “Choosing either path for meeting our future needs will pose a significant investment in time and effort.”