Challenges Faced in the Prepaid Industry

By Ryan R Rudman

The utilities industry has advanced at a rate at which the infrastructure, law and market cannot fully support or take advantage of. Large state-owned enterprises and private entities have dictated the agenda, leading to unsanctioned competition and a focus on improving profit without the consideration of service delivery quality.

There is a huge amount of pressure with multiple challenges in transforming the relatively slow-paced nature of the utility industry into a more dynamic one. The major challenges utilities face are, environment, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, consumer expectations, aging infrastructure, and security.

The concern regarding carbon emissions has a substantially large impact on business activities; however, due to the nature of water and energy services, the utilities sector faces greater expectations from governments and consumers alike. It is therefore the responsibility of the utility provider, not only reduce their own carbon footprint but also help consumers reduce their footprint as well.

The utility process needs to be streamlined and the provider needs to provide reliable services timeously, and this is key to optimising revenues and to avoid any loss of energy across the utilities infrastructure. Once utility price increases will no longer be a viable option, optimization of utility processes will force utility companies to provide top-of-the-range services with new innovative solutions for the industry.

Although energy resale is a regulated market it is far less enforced than it should be. However with the continuous price increases, specifically in the electricity sector utilities and providers thereof will have to adhere to governmental agreements and standards set in place due to consumer pressure.

On the consumer side, people want to see transparency to endure that they are billed correctly and an easier ways to interact with their service providers. The use of mobile devices, the Internet, IVR, and ecommerce opens a new avenue for utilities providers to satisfy the needs of consumers, especially when it comes to billing and informational services. Unfortunately this does require true innovation and fairly new infrastructure to delivery consumer centric services. Relaying on the already existing infrastructure may not get the industry very quickly where it needs to be. As consumers become far more sophisticated in their use of technology, it will eventually drive utility service providers to adopt and develop more suitable solutions to satisfy the requirements of the consumers.

With any business there are risks and the risk of a security breach in the utilities industry will have a negative impact if any data would be compromised. When choosing a service provider make sure the provider has stick security measures in place with will negate the effect of any attack on personal data stored by your provider.

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