Team Abjayon successfully completed the fastest Oracle MDM implementation in the world amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Know how
The Overview
The Middle East water industry is significantly burdened with rising water use rates, shortage of groundwater, and growing awareness of water conservation. In order to save water and lower water bills, AMR-based smart water is promoted as a potential solution.
In 2017 and 2018, Saudi Arabia water authorities installed nearly 878,800 electronic meters in numerous cities throughout the Kingdom. This was undertaken within the execution of a project to install more than 2 million smart meters and related infrastructure. Progressive water utilities are integrating cutting-edge technologies in monitoring equipment to up-scale water resource management, revenue collection, and customer service management.
In order to attain these optimizations in the meter-to-cash process, certain conventional challenges must be combated, such as:
- Collection of reliable meter reads & their validity
- Calculating the consumption with relevant business rules and estimation techniques
- Generating an accurate bill
In February 2020, a large tech-savvy water utility from the Middle East associated with Abjayon for implementing MDM functionality to upgrade its water and wastewater services’ efficiency, effectiveness, and financial sustainability.
The Plan of Action
Countering the objectives of the project, Team Abjayon facilitated an itinerary of vigorous planning and sophisticated execution:
To prioritize our client’s focal concern of minimizing billing errors, our experts decided on setting the meter data in the shortest period. This would allow their data analyst maximum time to analyze and clean the meter data. At the same time, the idea increased the complexity of the project by many folds.
“Abjayon’s accelerator for Oracle Utilities MDM enabled the client’s business teams to gain valuable insights into the issues impacting their metering infrastructure and take corrective actions.”
The Plan in Action
Abjayon employed a team of 30+ Utility domain experts and achieved an unprecedented deployment time of 7 weeks for the first phase, which included integration with the head end system and synchronizing master data from the CIS system. This spotted Abjayon with one of the fastest MDM implementations in the world. The successful set-up allowed our deep expertise to execute the final deliverables of the last phase in June 2021.
“The team’s proactive and timely operations helped to ensure nearly 100% billing accuracy when the system went live with the re-engineered Meter-to-Cash process, resulting in a significant improvement in overall operational efficiency.”
The Results
Our iterative approach was a success, aligning the project deliverables and organizational milestones. Optimizing meter data quality parallel to setting the billing system was a huge win. It resulted in ~99% billing quality adherence from day-1 after go-live. The implementation was accomplished well before the system was fully operational for billing based on bill determinants from the MDM system. This resulted in accumulated data of over a year’s worth of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) even before the system was deployed.
The end-user training prepared the client’s team for the automation of the new system and processes. Our all-rounder functioning in terms of handling, guiding and implementing the AMI through best business practices availed us tremendous appreciation from our customer.
Your Digital Transformation Partner
Abjayon is amongst the leading providers of technology solutions in the energy and water utility sectors. Send an email to info@abjayon.com to connect with us.
