“The business practice of systematically collecting, managing, and utilizing explicit customer preferences — about frequency, channel, content, interests, and intent — in outbound communications. These preferences are managed in a centralized repository and collected in a user-facing portal known as a preference center.”
Current situation
Per Gartner’s recent research on Preference and Consent Management, “Compared to Companies in Europe, North American Companies Report a Higher Rate of Deployment”. North American Utilities running on SAP CR&B platform, have following options to implement a preference and notification management solution:
Third Party Preference centers : utilities store customer preferences in a third party solution, usually hosted by third party companies in their cloud or on-premise.
In-house custom built solutions : often utilities are tempted to build the preference center within their SAP CR&B landscape.
SAP Premium certified add-on solution : some utilities have implemented an SAP certified solution that sits within their SAP CR&B landscape as an add-on solution.
Top 6 Challenges faced by Utilities Industry
uPrefer Solutions has done extensive research in the area of preference management and identified the following six as the key challenges faced by the Utilities industry.
Data Consolidation
Are all of the utility's Preferences in the same location as in the master & communication data?
Issue at hand: Native to CRM/IS-U/S4 vs. Third Party Preference Center.
Multi-Channel Integration
Is the Preference Center easily configurable to existing and evolving channels and devices?
Issue at hand: Rich Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Configurability as part of SPRO in SAP.
Scalability
Is there a limit on the number of accounts or preferences or channels or programs? If more programs/channels to be added, do I have to upgrade the Preference Center as well?
Issue at hand: Configurability vs. Custom Programming
Average Call Handle Time (AHT)
How easy is it for the CSR to create, modify, replicate or end a preference?
Issue at hand: Unnecessary calls to several systems.
Regulatory Compliance
Is the Preference Center adding to the regulatory compliance burden?
Issue at hand: Audit, Traceability, Double Opt-In, Consent, Do Not Contact, Do Not Disturb, Authorization.
Relationships
Utility's service being a critical service, can the utility let someone else other than the Contract holder to set preferences?
Issue at hand: Authorization - Landlord vs. Tenant, Company vs. Account Manager.
Preference Management - Process View
Artistic view of preference & notification process and explanation provided below.
Companies offer programs that suit their customer requirements
Customer enroll into the programs using a channel that is convenient to them
Transactions run in the system based on the enterprise specific processes (bill generated, customer move out)
Events triggered when specific transactions take place for a customer or a set of customers
Based on the customer preferences, communication is sent to the customers
Perform analytics on the existing preferences and provide customer insights to organizations.
