Energy Operations Management for Retail Markets
Retail Operations
Retail Operations is a web-based energy operations management system for retail power and gas marketers and distribution companies.
It is the industry's most comprehensive solution for retail energy markets. Retail Operations provides utility data management, customer contract management, revenue and load forecasting, load profiling and aggregation, and meter data management in a single system.
It is widely used across North America and Europe to streamline:
- Load and Revenue Forecasting
- Contract Pricing and Quote Management
- Supply Management and Position Reporting
- Scheduling, Settlement, and Market Communications
- Load Profiling, Aggregation, and Meter Data Management
- Wholesale and Complex Billing
- Integrated Solutions and Process Automation
Load and Revenue Forecasting
Retail Operations provides a bottom-up forecast based on service dates, usage history, and product types for each individual account, service location, or meter. Retail Operations supports all utility provided load profiles and models or build your own using historical meter and weather data. Forecast results can be reported at multiple levels of aggregation. Revenue forecasts can be created using standard product types or user-defined formulas. Multiple weather forecasts can be used to create different load and revenue scenarios.
Contract Pricing and Quote Management
Retail Operations includes a library of standard product types as well as a powerful formula editor to support user-defined products. These products model wholesale supply costs, retail price offerings, and utility rates or competitor prices. The pricing analysis engine calculates the cost to serve, revenue, margin, and customer savings over multiple contract terms. Quote management functionality tracks the effective dates and status of offers and can generate custom offer letters.
Supply Management and Position Reporting
Physical power and gas deals are fully supported, and when combined with aggregated load and ancillary service obligations, provide position reporting on multiple levels. Detailed and summary positions/imbalances are displayed both graphically and in tabular format. Wholesale prices and forward market price curves enable long-term financial position and mark-to-market reporting. Gas transportation and storage inventory management provide accurate cost of gas calculations.
Load Profiling, Aggregation, and Meter Data Management
Whether you're supplying or receiving metered usage information, Retail Operations is ideal for handling the associated collection, translation, analysis, and data-sharing functions. It can be configured to periodically retrieve and translate usage data from meter-reading systems, legacy systems, or metering service providers. Retail Office can serve as a central meter data repository for managing meter data as well as other external applications or processes. Retail Operations provides for review and validation of historical data used in usage profile creation, forecasts and backcasts, settlement, and billing calculations.
Wholesale and Complex Billing
Retail Operations includes a library of standard product types as well as a powerful formula editor to support user-defined products. Combined with our customer and contract database, Retail Operations can supplement your existing billing operations with complex charge types and algorithms. Users can print or email invoices directly from Retail Operations or use our API to feed data to corporate accounting systems.
Integrated Solutions and Process Automation
Using our open database model and API, Retail Operations can be deployed as either the hub or spoke of an integrated solution. The forecast engine combines the latest information from your CIS/CRM system with the current utility/ISO profiles and weather forecasts to provide accurate short- and long-term forecasts. Position reports utilize the latest market prices to show financial position while ISO communication provides you with up to date market-clearing results and settlement charge.
