Public Utility Services

Introduction

Public Utility Services such as Electricity & Water in developing countries are under increasing pressure to make their operations more efficient and public interface more interactive. A bulk of utility customers is domestic spread over wide geographic areas.

The Public Utility Services concept can be extended to the regional municipalities that collect property taxes.

Situation Analysis

One of the greatest challenges is to manage finances and operations in order to streamline the public utility services. Receivables from a large geographical region often hampers billing and cash collection cycles and thereby the overall operations of the service provider.

• Long 'billing to collection' cycles
• Large scope for misuse or incorrect billing
• Customer need to go to pay his bills

High Level Solution

A hand-held POS terminal makes a huge difference when it comes to electricity and water billing. The field agents who typically note down the consumption meter reading can now just enter the consumer number and the current meter reading in the POS terminal and generate a payment receipt. All this at the consumer location.

Using the POS terminal the field agent connects to the back-end server providing consumer details. The central server calculates the units consumed and payment due and sends it back to the terminal to print out a bill. The payment collection details, cash or cheque transaction, is updated to the server using the terminal and a receipt is generated for the sum received.

Bottom Line

A handheld transaction terminal not only eliminates the fraudulent consumption information but also helps the public utility services to realize their revenue and helps them offer convenience as a value add to the consumer.

The VISIONTEK Advantage

• Better Revenue Realization
• Consume less time than pure cash transactions
• Data visibility at all levels with administrative controls
• Easy to maintain, fast, and fool proof
• Efficient tackling of last mile operational issues
• Increased and improved customer reach
• Low cost of ownership, and overhead costs
• Minimize administrative and transaction cost
• Online process prevents mismanagement on the field
• Print receipt for consumer with transaction details
• Supports both online and offline transactions
• Track executive activity
• Transactions updated real time on the central server

Related product-93 POS

A mobile handheld data terminal to capture process and transmit information to host computers in real time. VISIONTEK 93 POS is easy to operate, light weight and handy.  more