- Ecosystem for digital energy suppliers
- Focus on the entire payment landscape
- Offering customers the right mix of payment methods
(powercloud, Offenburg, March 4, 2021) Many people continue to pay electricity and gas bills by direct debit – an established and widely accepted process. However, the conditions on the energy market are changing: As in other industries, alternative online payment methods are growing in importance. They can be used to optimize processes and satisfy customer demands. Apart from direct debit, what other options are there and which of them can be recommended as payment methods in the energy industry? Arvato Financial Solutions draws on extensive expertise from both the e-commerce industry and the utilities sector and can therefore apply empirical data to the optimal payment method mix.
The cooperation between powercloud and the financial specialists from Arvato Financial Solutions involves two powerApps: BPO on demand, and receivables management with Paigo. Both powerApps take the otherwise manual, resource-intensive, and costly administrative processes away from the utilities and integrate them into Arvato Financial Solutions’ established Shared-Service Framework. The utilities thus get an effective management system and access to intelligent technologies to control their business processes. This simple utilization of outsourcing services via a flexible interface enables the equally flexible handling of volume fluctuations and load peaks – especially relating to new customer acquisition, billing, market communications, payment transactions, dunning, and special processes such as insolvency processing and price inconsistencies.
Arvato Financial Solutions’ services range from risk and fraud prevention to the integration of various payment methods through to agile dunning. The “Paylink” feature is available for dunning processes, among other things. Customers receive an SMS or email with a payment request and a link to the supplier’s payment page. Following authentication, they can choose their payment method and confirm the payment. “The example clearly shows what options are opened up by alternative payment methods. This means we can make the entire dunning process more customer-friendly, and outstanding payments arrive faster,” explains Jan Florian Richard, Director Strategic Partnerships at Arvato Financial Solutions. “We know from many conversations with customers that many municipal utilities and other energy suppliers have a long way to catch up when it comes to alternative payment methods. This solution as part of powercloud enables them to digitalize and modernize their entire billing system.”
Overall, the integration of both solutions is an important step for powercloud. The company cooperates with an array of partners to completely cover the “payment” area within the SaaS platform. “We aim to offer customers a comprehensive range of powerApps for their payment transactions, which are then seamlessly linked to our billing solution,” explains Thayabaran Thanabalasingham, Head of Partner Sales. “Arvato Financial Solutions’ new powerApps fit perfectly with this strategy.”
About Arvato Financial Solutions
Arvato Financial Solutions provides professional financial services to renowned international brands as well as respected local businesses – allowing them to leave their credit management to a professional, so they can focus on what matters most for their business.
The services center around cash flow in all segments of the customer lifecycle: from identity and fraud prevention solutions and credit risk management to payment, factoring and accounting services to debt collection. The Arvato Financial Solutions team is made up of proven and reliable specialists in around 20 countries, among them 7,500 IT, analytics, process, and legal experts dedicated to exploiting the benefits of predictive analytics, advanced platforms, and big data. All employees are united by one goal: Providing companies with smooth and efficient credit management for their best possible financial result.
