Accenture Utilities BPO: Overview

Accenture Utilities BPO Services (formally Accenture Business Services for Utilities) was established in 2003 to provide scale and world-class meter-to-cash services to the globally fragmented utility industry.

Utility companies around the globe face an array of challenges that are hindering their ability to balance the needs of their customers against a utility’s need for operational effectiveness. Regulatory requirements, capital investments, energy supply, environmental and price pressures are all combining to place sometimes contradictory demands on utility companies.

To successfully deal with these challenges, utility companies need to become far more sophisticated about how they conceptualize and manage the customer experience. Even with the very best of intentions, the fragmented nature of the industry makes it very difficult for companies to single-handedly achieve the step changes in processes, costs, technology platforms and service that are needed to significantly improve performance.

Accenture is now helping more than 30 utilities outsourcing clients to achieve high performance through its industry-specific outsourcing offering, as well as, providing consulting and IT expertise.

According to Mike Mees, director of customer care at Enbridge, one of the fastest-growing natural gas companies in North America, “Outsourcing with Accenture has definitely allowed Enbridge to focus on strategy rather than on operations. Accenture’s client-focused approach and clear accountability have created a strong and flexible relationship that is helping our organization achieve high performance.”

Accenture Utilities BPO Services:

• Helps utility companies address industry challenges.
• Enables utility companies to manipulate all the industry value levers.
• Delivers consistent and predictable service through its highly industrialized back office, achieving results faster than any other outsourcing provider.
• Focuses on improving utility companies’ key metrics of cost to serve and customer satisfaction.
• Spans the full range of customer care outsourcing options with an end-to-end solution.
• Drives performance improvements through the use of leading-edge information technology, application support and infrastructure.

Download our brochure
To learn more about how to overcome the challenges currently facing the utilities industry, download our brochure High Performance Business for Utilities [PDF, 405KB].
PDF Help

To learn about more Accenture Services, sign up for My Outlook, your single e-mail source for all of Accenture's latest ideas and innovation, personalized specifically to your business interests and the industry issues you face.

Back to the Utilities BPO home page.

Back to the Outsourcing home page.

Accenture Utilities BPO Services helps utilities achieve scale, reduce operating expenses, access new skills and capabilities, and leverage the world-class processes and technology that lead to high performance.

With more than 30 years experience in working with electric, gas and water companies Accenture has developed a significant service line (of the top 30 global utility companies, 18 are its clients), serving more than 40 million utilities end customers, globally.

Recognized by industry analysts as one of the world’s largest BPO service providers dedicated to utilities, Accenture has more than 5,000 employees with 24/7 operations in eight countries (Canada, United States, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, the Philippines, India and Argentina). Accenture reads more meters, answers more calls, produces more bills and collects more money than most of the utility companies that are our clients.

Accenture’s results-driven, customer-focused approach has resulted in investments of more than $100 million. The company has developed or deployed more than 50 of its assets ranging from process and methodology best practices to full life cycle customer care and relationship management applications and delivered real, measurable, sustainable improvements in performance, consistently achieving 99 percent of service level metrics across all clients served.

Client testimonials are the real power of the Accenture Utilities BPO Services story:

"The transaction in outsourcing that we have done with Accenture has definitely allowed us to focus on our core operations at a time when we have major challenges. It has also achieved and even exceeded our cost reduction estimates. We are currently $6 million ahead of our targets after four years and we fully expect to realize more than $250 million in savings."
—Alister Cowan, former chief financial officer, BC Hydro

"Through economies of scale, best people, state-of-the-art technology and 24-hour delivery through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, Accenture Utilities BPO Services are providing a level of service that we weren’t able to provide and we are now able to realize the savings. We are also experiencing the highest customer satisfaction that we’ve had in 10 years at Enbridge. We are really happy with the level of service that we’re getting and that our customers are getting. The people that we deal with on a daily basis are doing a great job on our behalf and on behalf of our customers."
—Mike Mees, director of customer care, Enbridge

Read our client successes.

Accenture Utilities BPO Services helps clients become high-performance businesses through a comprehensive set of offerings and assets specifically aimed at doing outsourcing for utilities with an emphasis on meter to cash. The core functions include:

• Contact center: Inbound and outbound contacts via multiple channels.
• Billing and payments: Includes automated and manual exception processing, invoice generation and bill printing.
• Debt collection: Inbound and outbound contacts via voice, written, third-party agencies to secure and collect retailer revenue.
• Field service operations: Field activities including meter reading, field marketing, sales and services.
• Customer systems application and infrastructure outsourcing: Enables and supports delivery of superior customer service.

These services include a robust set of processes, systems, tools and people that give clients the ability to drive top-level services and cost to serve metrics, while reducing risk and increasing the pace of implementation.

Download our brochure
To learn more about our capabilities, download our brochure Achieving High Performance through Accenture Utilities BPO Services [PDF, 172KB].
PDF Help