Companies, organizations, and governments are facing increasing environmental and economic challenges. The pressure to improve corporate profits and sustainability has forward-thinking companies turning to energy management as a strategic source of cost reduction, profit margin growth, and cash flow improvements, not to mention regulatory compliance.

Energy is the third-largest budget item for most U.S. companies and it represents $1 trillion of the nation’s gross domestic product1. Like any major expense, energy usage must be understood before it can be reduced. However, many organizations to this day still resort to employing teams of specialists to manually enter utility bill data each month for their hundreds of facilities under management. Identifying energy cost and carbon emissions reduction opportunities involves collecting data that is not only accurate, but also timely and complete — a task that can only be accomplished through automation.

This white paper discusses the top 5 reasons why the process of manual data entry of utility bills should be abandoned and why automation is vital to the operations and outlook of your organization.

RESOURCES

WHITE PAPER:

STOP MANUALLY ENTERING YOUR UTILITY BILLS!Top 5 Reasons Why Automation is Key To Your Organization’s Success

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1 Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, “The Economic Impacts of the Oil and Natural Gas Industry on the U.S. Economy”

Reason 1: Because automation gives you near real-time access to energy data, and energy data is the foundation of all important energy decisions.

Data-driven decisions are more accurate and effective than decisions made based primarily on instinct or assumptions. It’s impossible to manage what cannot be measured, and energy data is key to understanding energy consumption and spend.

The decisions made regarding energy usage and spend are primarily driven by four major factors:

1. Financial performance2. Customer demands and satisfaction3. Sustainability for market leadership4. Regulatory compliance

Each of these drivers are causing executives to examine the impact energy spend has on their bottom line, on day-to-day operations, and on the organization as a whole.

Because energy spend is the third largest budget item, behind labor and materials, for most U.S. companies, it is often looked to as a starting point for cost cutting and profit improvement. Reaching optimal financial performance requires not only reducing energy consumption, but also accounting for rising energy prices and having a handle on your organization’s rate schedules.

With a myriad of options and alternatives in the marketplace today, customers have more power than ever to choose with whom they work. More and more customers are placing value on how their vendors operate and impact the world in which they live. These new customer demands are being answered, and we have seen that the organizations that commit to sustainability targets are leaders in their fields. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have found a positive correlation between environmental practices and financial performance2.

More and more nations are developing legislation to curb impacts on the environment. Complying with these rules and relations is not only necessary from a legal perspective, but also from a financial perspective in order to mitigate risks from penalties.

With important energy decisions to be made and actions to be taken, data is at the heart of it all. Sometimes decisions need to be made based on historical data, other times decisions need to be made with forecasting. Decision makers need a centralized and automated approach to gathering and normalizing this data to support not only their day-to-day operations, but also their long-term plans and goals.

Reason 2: Because more and more departments within your company are asking for utility data.

The energy management focus is shifting from tactical to strategic partially because an increased number of departments within an organization are beginning to see the value in utility bill data to support their core job functions.

Accounting teams were previously the only teams that needed utility bills in order to pay them in a timely manner, but these days, energy managers, facilities and building managers, energy procurement professionals, and sustainability executives across an array of industries are beginning to request access to utility bills for their own purposes. Some of the use cases for energy and utility bill data include, but are not limited to:

• Minimizing energy spend• Reporting sustainability progress• Managing procurement contracts• Minimizing procurement risks• Streamlining the compliance process• Achieving certifications• Minimizing operational costs

Utility expenses, which were before seen as merely a liability line item on a company’s balance sheet, are now viewed as a strategic asset capable of unlocking hidden opportunities for multiple organizational departments.

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“With important energy decisions to be made and actions to be taken, data is at the heart of it all.”

2 Source: University of Notre Dame, “The Relationship Between Corporate Sustainability and Firm Financial Performance”3 Source: Groom Energy

Strategic energy management has a different set of requirements as far as technology investments and governance levels, among other factors, are concerned (refer to Appendix A).

Reason 3: Because manually entering utility bill data is very costly.

Without an automated approach to data acquisition, organizations must resort to manually entering data into spreadsheets or directly into their accounting, sustainability, energy management, or business intelligence programs. For an organization deploying energy or sustainability programs, the data acquisition process can represent up to 50% of the project’s costs, not to mention cause additional risks to the project’s success3.

Manual data entry poses several risks to an organization, including:

Human error. Manual data entry is prone to human errors that can lead to inaccurate data.

Delayed data. The entire process of printing, shipping, delivering, and finally reading the utility bill can take between 45 to 60 days. By the time the bill is consumed, the data is old. Energy managers that are responsible for optimizing energy consumption not only miss opportunities to be proactive about their energy management practices, but also to be reactive in the event that the bill raises red flags by showing anomalies.

Partial or incomplete data. In an attempt to contain labor costs of employing manual data entry specialists, organizations may only capture the “must-have” data and leave behind other valuable data points, which could also be valuable to assess and analyze.

Lack of domain expertise. Data entry clerks typically do not have the domain expertise needed to understand hundreds of different utility tariffs

and rate schedules, which may result in hundreds of inaccuracies going unnoticed.

Manually entering utility bill data is an antiquated process and one that leaves the energy project and the organization susceptible to issues and missed opportunities.

Reason 4: Because introducing the large amounts of data needed for energy insights can present challenges if managed improperly.

Utility bills contain a lot of information. At times, the bill may contain up to 125 data points, each potentially just as valuable as the next for extracting energy insights. The increasing demand for deeper visibility into energy usage and spend is driving the growing need for better data analytics, and as a result, better data collection procedures.

However, technology advances and new organizational demands are resulting in these data sets’ becoming larger, global, and more varied, which can present technical and organizational challenges for companies lacking an efficient and effective way of collecting and managing the data (refer to Appendix B).

Firstly, larger energy data sets are the result of the integration of existing energy data sets combined with the deployment of more real-time energy data collection devices and sensors across the enterprise. Secondly, organizations that operate globally need to integrate energy data sets from various sites and countries to support these global energy management strategies. Finally, energy data is getting more varied from an increasing number of disparate utilities. These data sets are commonly captured in disconnected data management systems, which can create information silos. With more data, it becomes an even more daunting task to collect it all, especially through manual procedures.

Reason 5: Because automation allows for scalability, and scalability allows your organization to grow.

As energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives move towards the top of the corporate agenda,

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“The data acquisition process can represent up to 50% of the project’s costs...”

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having centralized and timely access to energy data will become essential. Acquiring data through automation is currently the only method that scales seamlessly, increasing the ability for your organization and its systems and processes to do more with less. Through pure data extraction straight from the utility, the time wasted during bill transit and delivery shrinks drastically and the errors committed during manual data entry are eliminated.

For commercial enterprises, automated utility bill data allows for energy cost-cutting opportunities, late fee avoidance, and improved profit margins, among other benefits. For energy services and software providers, automation of utility bill data acquisition is not only a way to increase operational efficiencies, but also a gateway to open new revenue channels and serve customers better.

The are many reasons for obtaining automated utility bill data, but the ultimate effect of providing your organization with the right tools and processes is to enable not only fast growth, but also smart and scalable growth.

ABOUT URJANET

Urjanet is the world’s first provider of automated energy data, enabling organizations across all industries to make smarter, more profitable and eco-friendly energy decisions. Urjanet’s proprietary technology seamlessly extracts disparate utility bill, meter, and weather data directly from the source, standardizes it, and then delivers it into existing energy management, accounting, business intelligence and sustainability reporting systems. Urjanet is a trusted data source not only for commercial enterprises, governments, and school districts, but also for many leading energy services, software, and bill payment providers that use Urjanet data to open new revenue channels, enhance operational efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction. For more information visit www.urjanet.com.

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Tacticalenergy management

Strategicenergy management

Data Size Small, patchy

Low frequency

Departmental

Site-specific

Data aggregation & consolidation

FeedFrequency

Governance Level

Technology Investment

Organizational Requirements

Big, global

Near real-time

Enterprise

System-wide

Portfolio & strategic risk management

Appendix A

The Shift from Tactical to Strategic Energy Management

Technical Challenges Organizational Challenges

Requires enterprise-scale datastorage, processing & software

Disconnected data management systems create information silos

Different functions have varying data requirements

Energy Data

Requires higher performance databases from software providers

Automated data collection requires upgrades in business intelligence tools

Various departments lack an accurate understanding of their data

Some organizations lack in-house data analysis skills to extract business

insights

Firms often do not have the internal resources to act upon real-time data

LARGER

GLOBAL

MORE-VARIED

REAL-TIME

Appendix B

The Technical & Organizational Challenges Resulting from Larger, Global, More Varied, and Real-Time Energy Data

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