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Benchmarking Meter Reading Performance
An extract from Meter Reading Profiles & Best Practices 2008, a new research report published by the Ascent Group, Inc.
Meter reading is the critical first-step in the utility revenue collection process, and for most utilities, a labor-intensive activity. While the use of automated meter reading technologies (AMR) is increasing, the majority of meters are still read manually, once a month. Any errors or delay in the meter reading process negatively impacts customer satisfaction.
Not only is it critical to effectively and efficiently read meters every month, the meter reader also plays an important community relations role — the “gatekeeper” who looks for leaks, problems, hazards, safety issues, and serves as a neighborhood watch. For many customers, the meter reader is often the only utility employee ever seen. These customer touch-points form the basis of customer opinion.
The meter reader position is usually an entry-level job. As such, meter reading departments can incur high turnover, thereby increasing the cost to hire and train effective and efficient meter readers, and ultimately, increasing the cost to read a meter.
With all the changes in the industry and the economy, most utilities have been forced to reduce operating costs. At the same time, companies are being asked by regulators, customers, members, and shareholders to increase customer service and satisfaction—essentially to “do more with less.” This is a daunting challenge for any organization.
Utilities are also faced with growing need for more timely access to energy usage information—to support real-time pricing initiatives, load forecasting, demand-side management, load control, competition, and customer demand. Additionally, status and usage information is needed on an event basis to improve reliability, power quality, and to identify outages. These more complex data requirements are driving the need for advanced metering infrastructures, smart metering, and further automation.
Clearly the meter reading organization is evolving with the introduction of automation. The diversity of metering and AMR equipment, complexity of accounts and billing, the challenges of service territory, and needs of different customer classes dictate different solutions for different companies.
Regardless of the implementation rate, the transition from manual reading to automated is challenging from a technology and people perspective. Routes must be consolidated and optimized, employee roles and responsibilities change with changing priorities, performance measurement metrics shift to accommodate the mix of automation and manual effort, processes and systems change… it’s a challenging time for any organization. Even after automation, metering devices must be visited periodically to ensure proper operation and to protect assets.
In this transition to automation and the quest for reduced operating expenses, most utilities are focusing on three basic approaches to meter reading improvement:
- Automated meter reading–large-scale implementation as well as strategies to pinpoint “high read cost” meters, unsafe meter locations, and high-turnover premises. Some companies have automated “key accounts” and commercial accounts to accommodate real-time pricing and/or prepare for the competitive market.
- Contract meter reading to reduce overhead, tackle seasonal peaks, and as a strategy to transition to automated meter reading.
- Reducing costs of manual reads through contract negotiations, rerouting, more sophisticated hand-held equipment and meters, productivity improvement, and lowering overhead; many have maxed out these options; Some have reduced costs to a point that makes it difficult to justify AMR, for residential accounts.
The promise of automation—AMR implementation remains the top plan for the future, partial or complete, for our utility panel. Other automation plans indicate a continuing interest in route optimization software and handheld technology upgrades.
To better understand how utilities are dealing with the challenges facing the meter reading function and its day-to-day operations, the Ascent Group conducted its fifth annual benchmarking project to evaluate Meter Reading performance and practices. Fifty-eight utilities participated in the research. A list of participants is included at the end of this report.
Benchmark Study of Meter Reading Practices
The main objective of the study was to evaluate the various tactics and strategies used today to read customer meters in order to identify best practices or opportunities for improvement. Secondary objectives included understanding:
- The practices linked to “best-in-class” performance;
- The range of performance by company and by industry segment;
- How utilities are using technology to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction;
- Other effective process improvement or cost-reduction techniques;
- How utilities measure individual, team, and center-level performance and encourage high productivity and performance;
- The role of meter reading training and its impact on performance.
- How companies are resolving the hard issues, such as inaccessible meters.
- To know what is possible.
Participants were asked to share management tactics and strategies, as well as identify any improvement in performance. The study also asked utilities to include considerations, successes, and plans moving forward.
To facilitate the gathering of benchmark data and practices, the Ascent Group created a proprietary Internet-based self-service benchmarking tool. Companies submitting benchmarking information received instantaneous online benchmark comparisons of their performance against the industry average. The result of this data gathering effort and subsequent benchmarking analysis is captured in this report.
Study participants range in size from 3,324 meters to be read to as many as 4.8 million. Sixty-nine percent of participants read less than the participant average of 738,000 meters per month. The majority of study participants were from the United States, however we did have six utilities from Canada, one from India. Bargaining units represent fifty-five percent of participants’ meter readers.
Benchmarking Meter Reading Performance
When evaluating performance of any organization, it is best to look at performance from three perspectives: Productivity, Cost, and Service.
We asked companies to report meter reading operational data so we could calculate several performance benchmarks. The following benchmark metrics were collected and calculated, based on participant feedback:
- Unit cost (cost per meter read –Operational & Maintenance costs only – direct labor, contractor costs, overtime, and non-labor O&M; no capital costs or overhead)
- Meter Reading Accuracy (for a representative month)
- Percent Meters Read (for a representative month)
- Meter Reading Productivity (meters read per FTE (per month))
Based on these benchmark metrics, we identified the “best performers” for each industry-segment (electric, natural gas, combination utility, and water/wastewater). Best performers were identified as those companies that deliver low cost meter reading, high productivity, and high service (low errors, low skips). We then calculated a “best performer” average for these high performing companies.
The “best performer” averages are depicted on the chart appearing on the following page. This is one of seven benchmarking metrics analyzed in this report. We also calculated an industry-segment average for each of the benchmark metrics, to demonstrate the performance of industry, by segment.
To gain an understanding of how your company’s meter reading performance compares and to identify opportunities for improvement, you can compare your performance against the “best performer” average and the industry and industry-segment averages.
“Cost per Meter Read” was calculated based on cost data submitted by each participant. Unit cost in this analysis represents Operational & Maintenance costs only—direct labor, contractor costs, overtime, and non-labor O&M—no capital costs or overhead.
Because AMR heavily influences labor and other O&M costs, we included two Best Performer averages for comparison—best performers with “Full AMR” and “Minimal AMR”. In this analysis, “Full AMR” best performers averaged 86 percent AMR meters and “Minimal AMR” best performers averaged 5 percent AMR meters.
Similar analysis was conducted on the other six meter reading benchmark metrics captured by this research. The full results of our meter reading benchmarking analysis is published in Meter Reading Profiles & Best Practices 2008. More information can be found on our website at www.ascentgroup.com
Study Findings & Recommendations
Best performing utilities use AMR strategically to address inaccessible meters, unsafe meter locations, high turnover premises, and other high-read cost meters. Sixty-seven percent of our participants use AMR or a similar technology to remotely read meters in difficult access locations. Eighty-one percent of our best performers have deployed AMR. As a group, best performers average 13.2 percent AMR meters.
Strategic deployment of AMR technology is an effective way to reduce cost, improve safety, and increase customer satisfaction. Best performing companies are utilizing AMR to tackle the problem-meters and high-read-cost meters. Companies have also automated meter reading for large businesses and commercial customers, in preparation of deregulation. While a company-wide implementation may not be feasible, a strategic deployment to address problem meters can be very effective.
AMR is the most popular “plan for the future” mentioned by participants.
Best performing utilities continually optimize routes to maximize productivity and reduce costs.The “best performers” identified in this study (above average performance—low cost, high productivity, high service) reported continuous or frequent rerouting and route optimization to maximize productivity and reduce costs. Companies with AMR implementations also stressed the importance of route consolidation and optimization throughout the transition to automation.
As long as there are routes to be read there will be room for optimization. Utilities can gain 10 to 20 percent efficiency on a company-wide rerouting. Rerouting is critical in areas of high growth, after an acquisition or merger, and during the transition to AMR. Many AMR solutions require route reading, either with a walk-by or drive-by technology. In many instances, achieving the gains of AMR on a mixed route requires rerouting. Software is available to help with the route optimization, however it’s not essential.
Best performing utilities implement clear and concise measures of meter reader performance—give employees a clear idea of job expectations and performance.The “best performers” identified in this study were deliberate in their measurement of employee, group, and departmental performance—cost, service, and productivity. Best performers reported providing employees with a clear idea of job expectations and performance.
Employees want to perform to expectation—make sure they clearly understand what is expected, the measures that will be used, how they are collected and calculated, and how they impact performance. Performance measures will change in the transition to AMR—route expectations change, employees may be performing other duties in addition to reading meters, emphasis will be shifting to other priorities—make sure your expectations and measures change accordingly.
Participants were asked to identify the measures used to evaluate meter reader performance. Eleven percent reported no measures of meter reading performance. A few rely only on periodic field audits of meter reader performance.
For those reporting meter reading performance measures, the most popular were completion rate—the number of meters read per assigned route and read accuracy or error rate.
Most companies reported having multiple measures in place, a combination of effectiveness and efficiency metrics.
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