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Mobile Payment Program for Electricity Supplier

Meter reading inside the Philippines
A transportable thermal receipt printer was used to solve a difficult difficulty by an electricity company that supplies electricity to an region six hours north of Manila, Philippines. The mountainous terrain, lack of a modern road network, and lengthy distances in between buyers produced billing and meter reading tough and correct record keeping impossible.

The problem
Meter readers travel on motorcycles. There was no logical strategy to strategy their routes in the cities. In rural locations, they followed energy lines off dirt track roads, until they identified a meter in the end of a cable. They matched the meter's serial number to that on a card and wrote inside the new reading. In the day's finish, the information was entered in towards the company's laptop method. Bills had been printed and delivered by a team of distributors, who retraced the earlier day's routes. Clients paid money or had seven days to create payment in the nearest organization office. Some meter readers could not locate or be bothered to appear for clients, so they merely made up the numbers.

The Solution
The electrical energy business equipped every single meter reader having a mobile payment system that integrated a thermal printer and custom software program. Following getting into the new reading into the hand-held computer, meter readers print out and provide the electrical energy bills within the very same visit. Back at the office, the workstations are docked and information entered. Details is accessible to counter staff in the company's collection centres. They enter the customer's account number into their desk top when presented with the bill, confirm the amount payable, collect payment, and print out a receipt.

The Benefits of a Mobile Payment System
An engineer at the electrical energy business mentioned the positive aspects have been immediate. The organization decreased the amount of meter readers from 45 to 25, decreased the information entry staff from 15 to five, eliminated the 43 bill distributors, and reduced the administrative employees who re-keyed the information.

With instant billing, the payment collection cycle was shortened. The application involves a prompt which can be a description from the next meter to become study, overcoming the issue of route arranging.

Produced up readings have already been eliminated, since they instantaneously show up as anomalies. Moreover, the hand held computer's internal clock imprints the time the entry was created, enabling studies to be conducted.

Enhanced Energy Usage Efficiency
The business identified a important side advantage with its new system- a 5% improvement in all round energy usage efficiency, resulting inside the reduction of 'systems loss'. When the organization draws down power from the National Grid, it really is charged based on a meter reading taken at the sub stations serving the business. For the very first time, they're able to establish precisely just how much electricity they may be promoting.

Speeding up the billing approach identified a 20% discrepancy in between what the electricity firm was drawing down and what it was selling. Meter readers record their observations directly into the mobile payment system and have identified direct theft and broken cables. As a result, the 20% discrepancy has been decreased to 15%, allowing the company to recoup in excess of $780,000 (US) annually.