MECOMS™: Empowering Smart Utilities
MECOMS™ is a business support system for energy and utility companies that combines flexibility, efficiency and smart insights to drastically cut cost-to-serve. MECOMS™ easily and quickly adapts to the changing business needs of any type of utility, both in regulated and deregulated markets. It enables utilities of any size to streamline business processes and combine high efficiency with first-class customer service. MECOMS™ also offers utilities the insight to detect operational inefficiencies and discover new business opportunities.
Microsoft’s solution of choice
MECOMS™ is Microsoft’s only recommended solution for energy and utility companies across the globe. It is certified for Microsoft Dynamics 365, meeting Microsoft’s highest software standards.
Challenging the status quo
Renowned industry analysts, such as Gartner, IDC and OVUM, recommend MECOMS™ as a major solution for energy and utility companies. MECOMS™ is refreshingly different and empowers utilities to outsmart the competition. This is proven by many successful implementations at utilities around the world.
Global execution capabilities
MECOMS™ is developed by Ferranti Computer Systems, and is the result of more than 30 years of experience in the utility industry. With offices and a network of certified partners across the globe, Ferranti offers worldwide capabilities for successful, on-time implementations with outstanding training and support.
Customer Management
- Product Management
- Contract Management
- Billing and Credit Management
Enterprise Asset Management
- Inventory Management
- Service Management
- Grid Management
Meter Data Management
- Advanced Metering Interaction
- Manual Meter Reading
- Validation and Calculation
Electricity
Despite environmental concerns, consumption of electricity keeps rising everywhere. Many governments promote green alternatives and demand side management, which requires smart grids with distributed production environments. Meanwhile, the first large-scale smart meter roll-outs are taking place. Nevertheless, utilities will still need to deal with a legacy of historical meter parks for a long time.
MECOMS™ is capable of simultaneously handling manual, automatic and smart meters, enabling a gradual upgrade of the existing infrastructure. Despite the advent of smart grids and meters, managing losses and allocating residues will remain a major concern. Since regulation for settlement and billing of transport and distribution costs keeps changing, MECOMS™ provides a powerful, yet flexible Market Communication framework to deal with the monetary and informational flows between market players.
Gas
While the gas market has some similarities with the electricity market, the differences are considerable. The transported energy of gas depends on the calorific value, quality, temperature and pressure of the gas. Furthermore, liquified gas can be stored and transported, creating a completely different market dynamic. Therefore, gas prices on spot markets fluctuate enormously. This increases the importance of reliable tools for sophisticated trading, forecasting and hedging.
The sheer amount of energy transported by gas pipelines is unrivalled. Selling this commodity requires a sound knowledge of the market and its consumption patterns, especially in the highly demanding B2B segment.
MECOMS™ has been implemented at gas companies in several countries. The gas market blueprint is designed to natively handle all specific aspects of this complex business.
Water
Water companies are increasingly subject to mergers, acquisitions and privatizations, which forces continuous reorganization to achieve optimal scale and integration of the entire water cycle.
MECOMS™ is a flexible and sophisticated solution to deal with water company challenges. For example, it easily handles customer move-in, building owners associations or joint-billing of municipal taxes or garbage collection. The MECOMS™ Billing engine natively deals with complex situations such as unmetered connections, and makes it possible to calculate charges based on the number of taps, inhabitants or any other parameter.
Thermal
Many countries are introducing district heating and cooling systems to help provide a cleaner environment and exploit surplus energy of waste incarnation processes. Thermal companies are often closely embedded into local society and customer satisfaction is of foremost importance.
MECOMS™ Contract Management provides flexibility to deal with any number of customers, without losing track of their peculiarities. Because of the close local ties, a socially conscious pricing policy needs to be maintained. This requires thorough forecasting to balance demand with purchase and/or production. MECOMS™ features sophisticated tools for analysis, planning and portfolio management, taking into account the specific situation and resources of the utility