The latest round up from the Datamere team.
2020 is here with a bang and it’s all systems go in the Datamere and DMS offices. You may be aware that we have just passed our 20 year mark in the software business and some of you will have been with Datamere right from the start. It’s a big milestone for us, we’ve seen the business grow almost tenfold and are proud to hold our market share in such a competitive industry. That said, we have to work hard to ensure our software and services continue to offer an all-around positive user experience and that we can adapt to the many industry changes.
The Faster Switching project is a large industry change scheduled for 2021 and for those of you who are involved in the numerous workgroups, you’ll be aware of the significant changes and challenges it poses. We’ve recently passed the latest readiness assessment date and shared our responses so you can see our status on each of the specific areas.
Our next step is to provide all clients with our analysis of what the changes mean (to GENUS©) and how much development is required in order to comply. A separate issue but integral to the project is the adaptor service which will allow suppliers to connect to the CSS (Central Switching Service), which has to be in place in order to comply.
There are a number of options involved with choosing an adaptor service including an offering from Xoserve or an internal adaptor layer developed within GENUS©. We are collating our findings on this and will provide some analysis on the route we suggest our clients take. We expect to provide this information within the next few weeks.
There has been minimal interest from our collective clients in moving ahead to develop a DCC integration layer within GENUS©. Therefore, this proposed development has been put on hold. Please contact julie@datamere.co.uk if you wish to revisit this option
New GENUS© Customer Services Screen
This new functionality will be available shortly and is intended to provide a quick snapshot of any key information which would be relevant to a customer service operator, without having to look within different areas of GENUS©. The Customer Services screen will detail customer information including supply address, contact information, a snapshot of any recent bills or credits, recent meter reading history, accounts ledger and any recent workflow items and actions. Items such as invoices would be hyperlinked allowing quick access to the data if needed.
This functionality has been designed to allow operators to instantly have all the relevant customer data to hand, particularly when handling telephone calls. It’s also ideal for those suppliers with larger customer service teams, who may not be familiar with GENUS© in general as it removes the need to navigate around the system looking for recent and relevant information.
The Customer Services Screen sits behind a switch with a cost of £5K to enable the functionality. Please contact us, 01625 525033 or support@datamere.co.uk if you are interested in learning more about this new feature.
Advanced Billing
As we mentioned in the last newsletter, Advanced Billing is now available, and is being used by our managed services team to bill for some of our clients. We know that the majority of our suppliers tend to bill consumption in arrears but we have discovered some advantages to using the Advanced Billing option. The functionality has been designed to allow clients to forward bill a site to prevent a lag in cashflow whilst waiting for the opening reads following the transfer of a supply. The functionality works by looking at the AQ and calculating a consumption without the requirement of meter reads. A site is then reconciled following the acceptance of the industry readings and the associated bills and direct debit requests are adjusted accordingly. Subsequent invoices are created monthly following the supply start date. This does move away from a traditional invoice run at the start of the month as the billing date for each site will vary according to the supply start date.
We are aware that a number of suppliers work to this pattern and it does have an effect of balancing out workload throughout the month.
If you would like to know more about any of this functionality please get in touch.
Datamere Charges
We are currently in the process of reviewing all of our support and managed services charges for 2020. We will be in touch with all clients directly to discuss the proposed charges. Our daily development rate has changed to £710/day (excluding VAT) and this price is now effective. Any previously accepted quotations will be honoured at the 2019 rates.
EnergyMind
EnergyMind is an organisation that has been set up to support mental health for workers within the energy sector.
They are running a series of workshops over the next few months to discuss mental well-being in the workplace. If you wish to attend a workshop you will need to sign up to EnergyMind via their website. https://www.energymind.org.uk/
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