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| Case Study |
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Patni provides Service Billing Encapsulation / Betterment for largest
Utility Company in California |
Patni's solution of a restructured billing engine brought significant betterment to the client's billing system and marked reduction in maintenance costs.
The Client
The largest Utility Company in California, with a consumer base of 4.2 million.
The Challenge
Deregulation of the Electric Utility industry in California opened up a gamut of new opportunities for the client. At the same time, competition was compelling it to look for new avenues of providing superior and efficient service at a lower cost to its customers.
The client, therefore, was keen on restructuring its Service Billing system to cater to future requirements, and reduce maintenance costs substantially.
This called for major architectural changes in the Service Billing system, to convert the traditional billing process to a more dynamic and futuristic one. The new architecture required reusable independent callable modules for multi-point access of the Billing Engine.
Patni, with its deep functional and technical skills, partnered with the client to provide a suitable solution.
The Solution
The Patni team followed an Engineering Process to dismantle embedded billing functions into distinct, reusable primary functions. The code was re-designed so as to achieve an extremely modular and flexible architecture. Service Billing was 'encapsulated' into following distinct functions:
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Obtain Service Account Related Information |
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Obtain Usage |
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Obtain RP&A data (Contract Information/PX information) |
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Calculate Billing Usage |
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Calculate Service Plan - Determines the applicable Service Plan components based on effective date periods, charge factors based on various dates, profiles, seasons, tariff prices and contract prices; Calculates the charge amount for each Service Plan component applicable |
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Finalize Statement - Calculates final Service Account Statement totals |
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Service Account Statement Update |
The key feature of this architecture is its ability to allow many other systems to use Statement Calculation capabilities of Service Billing without affecting the client's core billing process.
For e.g., Automated Rate Comparison process can use these encapsulated billing functions to calculate the Statement for Alternate Service Plans and use the data for Rate Comparison. The AMICOS application can similarly call Service Billing modules for interactive statement calculation for the client's web users.
The Benefits
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Major milestone in web-enabling of Billing Services |
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Equips the client with the ability to serve as a Billing Service Provider |
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Factors contributing to future cost savings: |
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Reduction in LOC by 45% |
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Performance Improvement 15% CPU savings |
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Retrofitting efforts from batch code to online code eliminated |
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Reduced defects that were being introduced due to 'missed' updates in multiple copies of Service Billing code |
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New modular approach and efficient error handling; faster response time for production support |
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Code optimisation to address issues of processing large data volume v/s as needed access |
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Project completed ahead of schedule, within budget, with no defects at acceptance testing phase. |
The Technology
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IBM-3090 MVS ESA 9221 Series |
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MVS COBOL II |
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DB2 5.1 |
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CICS |
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JCL |
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VSAM |
Client Testimonial
"Patni has exceeded every goal of the
Betterment Projects. Their part was done
on time, within budget, has exceeded
performance expectations, has had
practically no defects reported in our
testing thus far... just really superb
performance."
- Client's Senior Manager
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