Utility Billing And Customer Information Systems Software And Services Market To Reach $4B By 2017

The confluence of an array of forces – including renewable energy, smart meters, deregulation, social media, analytics tools, and growing customer technology sophistication and expectations – is driving electric utilities to take a more customer-centric approach across their businesses. In particular, utilities have recognized that many current legacy billing and customer information systems (CIS) are insufficient for the long term, and they are developing replacement strategies to avoid obsolescence. As a result, according to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, the electric utility billing and CIS software and services market will grow from $2.3B in 2011 to $4.0B by 2017, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5%.

“Other industries, such as banking, insurance, transportation, and telecommunications, have undergone similar IT transformations, but the challenge to utilities is the most daunting faced by any industry today,” says chief research director Bob Gohn. “Many legacy billing and CIS tools are regarded as being technically unsuited for the emerging smart grid requirements.  The technical and workforce skill risks are high, and the investments required to meet the emerging standards of performance will be considerable.”

The billing and CIS replacement strategies available to utilities include wholesale IT transformation, selection of a managed service provider to outsource the function, alignment with providers of integrated software suites like Oracle and SAP, and/or more measured, modular roadmaps for instituting billing and CIS functionality to accommodate the new market realities. The latter approach can range from aggressively upgrading key capabilities to embracing cost avoidance by grafting on extensions to legacy systems in order to avoid process disruption. However, this may only delay the organizational/business operations transformation that these companies will eventually have to face.

The report, “Electric Utility Billing and Customer Information Systems”, analyzes the global market opportunity for utility billing and CIS software and services. The report also includes a view of the growth of billing and CIS systems in regulated and deregulated environments. The study provides a comprehensive assessment of the demand drivers, business models, and technology issues associated with this rapidly growing opportunity. Key industry players are profiled in depth and market forecasts for worldwide electric utility billing and CIS software and services revenue, segmented by region, are provided through 2017. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Pike Research website.