Vendor Assessment: Customer Care and Billing Industry Short List - Customer Care in the New Energy Economy

This IDC Energy Insights report will help energy companies evaluate customer care and billing systems, specifically customer information systems (CISs) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The focus is on the changes brought by new energy economy strategies such as smart metering, dynamic pricing, demand response, and energy efficiency and whether the traditional customer care and billing systems are able to handle these new challenges.

According to Jill Feblowitz, practice director of IDC Energy Insights, "Companies are well on the way to having a full complement of functionality to support the new energy economy. Most vendors have mature capabilities for on-bill financing of energy efficiency, net metering, and traditional special rates (time of use, direct load control) and have introduced capabilities for exotic pricing (dynamic, market index, critical peak, etc.). The next frontier is advanced customer analytics."